


Improbable Blending

by phoenixgal



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Jack becomes a host, Kid Fic, M/M, Slow Build, Tok'ra
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-09 06:45:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 42,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8880001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixgal/pseuds/phoenixgal
Summary: When an attack leads to a Tok'ra symbiote taking Jack as a host to save both their lives, it's only supposed to be temporary. Unfortunately, temporary can get dragged out when all your allies are on the run. Jack doesn't want to live like this, much less get dragged into the symbiote's life. But the longer they stay together the more the symbiote changes him, including who he loves. Jack finds himself on a crusade against a shadowy enemy, trying to help solve a mystery of where the Jaffa are disappearing to, all while caring for a kid in need and trying to work out how he feels about Daniel.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Um, the plot might have gotten a little complex.
> 
> The Tok'ra are fun to write about. I like the fics about Jack and Kanan, but I wanted him to get Tok'ra'ed with Daniel around so I made up a new Tok'ra and made it a total AU.
> 
> I have most of this written, but I'll probably get around to posting it bit by bit as I go through and edit and fill in some missing pieces.
> 
> No Beta. Mistakes all mine. Don't own them, just borrowing.

It was supposed to be a pretty standard mission bringing some not that exciting intel to the Tok'ra on their new home base and hopefully (though Jack didn't hold his breath) getting some decent intel in return.

They had most of what they needed but for some security reason, they had to wait another day in the Tok'ra tunnels before they were allowed back out on the surface to access the gate. More confusing Tok'ra security. It drove Jack nuts.

Daniel was trying to make the most of it. Gendash, their escort, was surprisingly forthcoming about Tok'ra history and Daniel was making notes all about their long lost queen, Egeria, and the founding of the Tok'ra. Then some other Tok'ra, an older guy named Kavith, wandered by and tried to explain that there had originally been two queens, the other one was Kishar, but that nearly all of Kishar's children had died.

“It is true that Kishar also rebelled, but nearly all of the Tok'ra today are Egeria's children,” Gendash said.

 _“Nearly,”_ Kavith said, sounding pissy, though to Jack nearly all the Tok'ra sounded pissy nearly all the time. Jack hated that reverberating voice. Even when he knew the speaker was Tok'ra, it grated on him.

“I'd love to learn more about the history there though,” Daniel said.

“Not all of us are all that interested...” Jack started, but without warning, the whole cave began to shake.

Jack swore and they all moved out. Most of the Tok'ra were frantically packing away equipment and ringing up to ships in orbit. They had no idea what was going on, and their escort, Gendash, wasn't talking. Along with Kavith and another Tok'ra, the seven of them ran across the cold, barren landscape of the planet toward the gate as quickly as they could.

“Who's attacking?” Sam asked.

If Gendash answered, none of them heard it. They heard the whirr of Death Gliders above and the first explosion rocked the ground below them, throwing up rocks and earth in their path.

“Dial it up!” Jack shouted. “We'll bring them through with us to the SGC!”

Daniel was already at the DHD dialing Earth with Teal'c by his side. The final chevron was about to lock. Jack looked behind him and saw Sam still running, the three Tok'ra on her heels.

“Go, go!” he cried out as the wormhole engaged ahead of them. “We're coming in hot!” he said into the radio.

Daniel and Teal'c had already gone through. Another blast from the Death Glider above hit dangerously close, knocking Gendash to the ground. One of the other Tok'ra stopped to help her to her feet, dropping his own belongings.

Sam ran on and Jack was relieved to see her pass him in the sprint for the gate. Once she had, he could also turn and go. He paused for just a second to urge the Tok'ra to hurry up and join them as well.

It was a second too long. As Sam went through the gate, Jack felt another blast from the Glider hit the ground, this one at his feet right between his position and the three Tok'ra. He was thrown to the ground, his ears ringing, his body so numb he had an instant of worry that he might be about to die.

He could see the Tok'ra. Gendash was almost certainly dead. She had taken the hit almost directly and there was a sickening smell of charred flesh in the air. He couldn't see the other two, just that they were down. From the corner of his eye, he saw the wormhole, his only hope of escape, disengage.

He couldn't see the Death Glider above. It must have moved away to other targets. He should get up and redial Earth. He might have a shot if they were distracted long enough. The DHD was only a few yards ahead of him. All he had to do was get there.

He wanted to get up, wanted to get himself to safety, but he simply couldn't. He had no idea what was stopping him exactly. Something was deeply wrong. Shock. He must be in shock. But why? Jack picked up his hand.

That's when the waves of agony swept over him. As he tilted his head, he realized the whole side of his pants were burned off. Some of the smell of burned flesh was almost certainly him. The side that wasn't burned was under more rubble than he realized could be kicked up by a Death Glider blast. He would need to move it in order to move. But moving his other hand, he felt a crack and another, even sharper wave of pain. This was bad. It was especially bad because he was pretty sure he wasn't going to last long enough to redial the gate.

The blackness closed around him and he knew he wasn't getting back up again.

* * *

“We have to go back!” Daniel shouted. “Jack was right behind us!”

“There were three Tok'ra with us as well,” Sam said. “They were bringing us to the gate.”

“If not for the help of our allies, we would not have reached the gate in time,” Teal'c said.

They all spoke at once in the Gateroom, calling up to General Hammond above.

“SG-1, one at a time. I need a situation report before I can send anyone back there!”

Sam laid out the situation as simply as she could. They knew so little about what had happened anyway. Attack. Probably Ha'tak. At least two Death Gliders attacking the surface. Explosions. The Tok'ra evacuating via ring transport and closing off their tunnels.

“I can't send you back in there without back up. Two minutes and I'll have a unit of Marines in the Gateroom ready to go.”

It was a long two minutes.

“He was right there,” Sam said.

“Indeed,” Teal'c said.

The Marines came in through the metal doors but before they could dial, they heard Sgt. Harriman's voice on the speaker. “Incoming wormhole!”

“Not now!” Sam said.

“SG-1's IDC.”

“Thank God. Open the iris,” General Hammond ordered.

Seconds later, they saw Colonel Jack O'Neill stumble through the gate, the event horizon collapsing behind him. His movements were jerky and uneven. His clothes were half-burned away revealing legs that were a bloody mess. His entire right side was twisted unnaturally.

He fell forward unconscious but no one in the Gateroom missed that his eyes glowed as he went down.


	2. Nightmares and Escapes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The slashes / \ indicate internal host and symbiote communication. I had other punctuation, but it messed with the formatting most royally!

His first thoughts were all questioning confusion. Where was he? How had he gotten here? Was he safe? And, most importantly, why wasn't he dead?

/Easy. You are safe and nearly healed.\

Panic washed over him and he thrashed fully awake, struggling to sit up and discovering that he was restrained.

/Calm, Jack. Calm.\

“What's going on?” His voice sounded ragged and rough. He forced his eyes open and saw the bright, industrial lights of the infirmary.

/You're in your own place. They're taking care of you the best they can.\

“Who's talking?” he asked belligerently.

“Jack?” Straining against his bonds, Jack saw Daniel stand up from a chair next to the bed he was in. “Janet! He's awake!”

/I'm talking.\ The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Disembodied. Formal. /I am Kavith.\

“No,” Jack said. “No. No!”

/Thrashing about won't help, Jack.\

“Jack? If you're in there, please try to stop fighting.” Daniel looked concerned. And immediately Jack could see why. Several SF's appeared, weapons at the ready.

He tried to stop moving, to get hold of himself, but it was difficult. He felt wildly angry and betrayed. If it was an option, he'd have clawed at the base of his neck. And where was his gun? Could he just shoot himself?

/That would be a waste of all the hard work I've done keeping you alive for three days.\

“Three days!”

Daniel exchanged a look with Dr. Fraiser as she came in the room.

“Yes. You've been in here for about nearly three full days. Colonel O'Neill? Is that you?”

They were looking at him expectantly. It only confirmed what he already knew. What he didn't want to be true. Could this be a nightmare?

/Not a nightmare. I'm sorry.\ The voice was laced with real regret, sorrow that Jack could feel not just in the tone, but as if it were his own emotion.

“I've got one of those damned snakes in me, don't I?”

Everyone in the room looked slightly relieved, perhaps because they didn't want to be the ones to tell him.

“Yes,” Dr. Fraiser replied, in her most businesslike voice. The doc always had a knack of laying things out straight. “I'm afraid you do.”

“But without it, you probably would have died,” Daniel said, looking at him intently.

/He speaks the truth,\ Kavith told him. /You were greatly injured. My own host had died. Finding you alive, I took you and brought us through the gate. I know you are not a willing host, my friend, but I did the only thing I could to save your life and mine.\

“Well you should have left me there. I would rather have died!”

“We thought you were right behind us,” Daniel said.

“Not you!”

Daniel and Dr. Fraiser exchanged another look.

“And why am I tied up?”

“Um, Jack...” Daniel began.

“Because I ordered it.” General Hammond came in the infirmary, obviously called down by Jack regaining consciousness. Jack could see Teal'c and Sam behind him, as well as two more SF's.

“Be realistic, Jack,” Daniel said. “We don't know for sure if you're a Tok'ra or...”

“I'm not a goa'uld!”

“Exactly what you'd say if you were a goa'uld,” the General pointed out.

Jack groaned.

/If you'll allow me to speak to them, perhaps I can convince them.\

“No!” Jack said. “I mean…” He tried to relax himself down on the bed but he kept struggling, almost against his own will. “I don't know what I could say to convince you. Or what the snake could say.”

“We might like to meet him,” Daniel offered.

“He says his name's Kevin.”

/Kavith.\

Jack felt the bristles of annoyance from the symbiote. /Whatever.\

“Kevin?” Daniel asked skeptically.

“Something like that.”

“That does not sound like a typical Tok'ra name,” Teal'c said.

“Sir, we've tried to contact the Tok'ra, but they're clearly on the run after whatever happened on P6X-482. Perhaps… um… Kevin might be able to shed some light on how to contact them? Or what happened?” Sam asked.

/It is not so hard to relinquish control, friend. I can answer their questions.\

“He can hear you,” Jack said.

“Well?” General Hammond asked.

/I have already forced myself on you against your will. I won't take control without your permission, friend.\

/Well la de da. Aren't you considerate?\

/Tell them that I have the coordinates of the next rendezvous point for the Tok'ra and can share them. However, there is no stargate there. And without a gate, I'm not sure if the tau'ri's meager technology will allow you to visit the next home base.\

“He says he knows where they went, but there's no stargate there.”

“We could try the Asgard, sir,” Sam said to the general, who nodded.

“And who's responsible for the destruction of their old base?”

/I do not know for sure, but my guess is Eshu. An operative in his service was recently lost. Perhaps she leaked information.\

“He doesn't know, but thinks maybe it was Eshu,” Jack said.

“Eshu?” Daniel sounded surprised. “We haven't seen him much.”

“Eshu has never been popular among the other System Lords,” Teal'c announced. “He is seen as treacherous and underhanded, even for a goa'uld.”

/Your jaffa friend's characterization isn't wrong.\

“Great,” Jack said. “So how long are you going to leave me stuck in this bed? And when can I get this damned snake out of me!”

* * *

The answer to both Jack's questions turned out to be not soon enough. After some debate, they agreed to place him in one of the isolation rooms since he could be observed and the security in the room was much stronger than any of the guest quarters. Letting Jack leave the Mountain, either out into the world or through the gate, was out of the question.

“Sir, you have to admit, you'd do the same thing in our situation.” Sam looked distressed on his behalf, which he appreciated, but it didn't do much to help when he was stuck inside. “At least there's no immediate crisis. I know it's not ideal, but if we have to wait a couple of weeks, then we can.”

“Easy for you to say,” Jack groused.

Kavith had been mostly silent in his mind. He could feel the symbiote's presence, but it was so uncomfortable that he kept shying away every time Kavith had an emotion or a thought. There was something creepy about it. He shivered knowing some of the emotions he felt weren't his own. The symbiote seemed to sense that and Jack didn't hear anything in his mind vocalized for the rest of the day.

Daniel came in and played chess with him for awhile. Then they managed to get a TV in there and some old movies. Jack realized that his whole right side felt sore.

“Your bones were broken in multiple places,” Daniel said. “Janet wasn't sure how you even managed to walk, even with the help of a Tok'ra.”

Jack felt Kavith resonate with those words, a sense of pride and accomplishment for having brought Jack through under impossible circumstances. Jack tried not to think about it.

They watched the movies that happened to be with the video player. Westworld was there and Indiana Jones. Daniel complained about the archeology. Teal'c joined them for Westworld and Daniel spent much of the movie explaining the concept of the “Wild West” while Jack had to explain theme parks.

“The tau'ri have interesting ideas about how to spend leisure time.”

“I'd rather kick back with some movies and beer myself.”

“I'll bet we could get you some beer,” Daniel offered.

“This is hardly leisure time.”

“We've been in worse spots.”

“We most certainly have,” Teal'c agreed.

“Easy for you to say. You aren't locked up with a parasite in your brain.”

“I'm sure it will be resolved,” Daniel said.

* * *

_The air was acrid with the smell of sulfur and smoke. He had to get the boy out to the water and clean him. Maybe then they could board the ship and get away. They weren't the only ones running. The remains of the whole city was with them. People with nothing left, streaming toward the ocean, desperate and hurting. The boy tripped and fell in a gutter, splashing blackened water everywhere. He reached down but the crowd pushed him forward, trampling. It was all he could do to get back to the boy._

Jack woke up all at once in a sweat, sitting straight up, trying to figure out where he was, who he was. The lights were low, but he was in the isolation room. It took him only seconds to realize it, but for a moment he really hadn't known and there had been a sense of panic.

He felt the snake in him. It didn't say anything. It almost never did. But this was day four of nightmares and dreams, none of which felt like they belonged to him.

It was also day five of the isolation room, which meant it had been a week with no word from the Tok'ra and no end in sight to being stuck here. They almost believed him, Jack thought. Daniel believed him, he was sure. But it didn't change anything. They weren't letting Jack O'Neill with everything he knew, his years of state secrets, out of the SGC with an alien at the helm. It would never happen. And the longer he stayed in there, the more convinced Jack was becoming that this would be the last room he'd ever see.

But how was he ever supposed to get the alien out of his head if he was stuck there? They'd heard from the Asgard that they were busy and would try to reach them “soon” - a vague concept that Jack supposed could be any time from another couple of days to a year. From the Tok'ra they'd had no word at all. Jack had heard they'd been to Tollana, but hadn't gotten much in the way of help. They could outfit him with the same sort of device that had lit up when Skaara and Klorel spoke, but since that wasn't exactly the problem, they couldn't do any more. The Tollan didn't have a way to extract the symbiote without killing it. The Tok'ra themselves had stasis containers, but they didn't have access to those and in just water, the symbiote wouldn't last long.

The only way to do that would be to find a new host. Of course, the SGC wasn't keen to offer anyone up and no one was exactly volunteering.

Jack got up and went to the bathroom and washed off his face. The main room had tinted windows along the top of the wall and cameras mounted on the ceiling. The cameras in the bathroom were less obvious, but they were there too. Not that he could have any privacy anywhere he went.

/You want to tell me what that was about?\ Jack sent.

/Sorry, friend. I am trying.\

Jack felt such a complex set of emotions from Kavith. There was fear and uncertainty there. And a sort of desperation that he was also feeling. He had thought for the last day or so that he was the one going stir crazy, but he began to suspect Kavith was having just as much trouble if not more.

/Trying to do what? What's really going on?\ Because there was more going on. Jack could feel it. /Who was the boy?\ It had upset him, the boy. He had been so young, maybe just seven or eight years old. And he had felt such a sense of love and affection for him.

/From another time. Another life. More than five centuries past now.\

/Did they make it?\

Jack felt Kavith's hesitation. /Yes and no. Lodesh, that was my host at the time, got the boy through the crowds and onto a ship to escape the destruction that Eshu's invasion brought. But he died from disease on the ship before they could reach the planet's southern continent.\

/Who was he?\

/His son.\

/I thought the Tok'ra didn't have children.\

/It's uncommon. Matti was born not long before Lodesh became my host.\

Jack settled himself back in the isolation room. There was a pile of crossword puzzles that Sam had brought for him and a few random spy novels Daniel had grabbed from his house. Jack didn't especially want to do anything though. It didn't help that now that he was fully healed, he found he needed almost no sleep.

/Charlie.\ The boy in the dream had reminded him of Charlie. He looked nothing like him. Dark hair and olive skin, in a short dark purple robe. The emotions had reminded him.

/He was your son,\ Kavith sent.

There didn't seem to be anything else to say to that. He felt Kavith's uneasiness grow. He didn't know why, but he didn't think he wanted to know.

* * * 

“I'm losing it in here, Doc.”

“I'm sorry, Colonel. You know you'd do the same thing if the situation were reversed and it were someone else in here.” Dr. Fraiser looked sympathetic, but also uneasy.

/She's obviously trying her best.\

It was day ten. In the last day or so, Kavith had become more talkative. Jack wasn't sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, he wanted Kavith gone. On the other hand, he was bored out of his mind alone in the isolation room with only occasional visitors.

“We're going stir crazy in here,” Jack complained.

/Even some fresh air would be appreciated at this point.\

/Fishing would be relaxing.\

/We need to leave this planet.\ It was the first time Kavith had expressed such a clear desire. He seemed to be trying so hard to hold himself back from Jack's conscious mind. The force behind this thought was so strong that Jack wanted to push past his keepers and make for the gate.

“I'll pass it on to General Hammond, Jack,” Dr. Fraiser said. “But I wouldn't hold out hope.”

“Wouldn't hold out hope for what?” Daniel asked.

“Getting out of here,” Jack complained, clamping down on the desire to run, run, run. He was safe here, even if he was going out of his mind. There was no reason to run. “At this point, you may as well throw away the key.”

“It hasn't even been two weeks, Jack.”

Dr. Fraiser excused herself, sharing a look with Daniel as she went.

“What's that look for?”

“We're just as frustrated as you, Jack. That's all.”

Daniel made himself at home, sitting in one of the padded chairs at the table and laying out the lunch he'd brought from the commissary for them to share. Tuna salad sandwiches, not exactly exciting stuff.

“There's no way you're as frustrated as we are.”

“Hm.”

“What's that hm for?”

“Just… Linguistic observations. Jack, we are curious. Is there some reason that we haven't heard from Kavith himself?”

/Don't get any ideas,\ Jack sent.

/Any ideas that I might have a place here? Don't worry, friend. I've been getting the message loud and clear.\ Kavith sounded a mix between annoyed and amused.

“You haven't heard from him because I'm me and he's not staying.”

“Yes, of course. It's just… It might be easier to trust you if we could meet him.”

/The fact that I have not spoken to them directly makes them fear that you or I are hiding something, friend.\

/Yeah, I got that.\

/It's not so hard to let go. Being out of control is difficult for you, is it not? But I promise to let go after I speak with Dr. Jackson.\

/No.\

/Jack. See reason. It's a momentary discomfort.\

/I said no.\

/You know I could take control if I wished.\

Jack refused to respond to that, but he felt his anger rise. “This is my body. My mouth. And I'm not going to let myself be used by a no good snake.”

“Is he no good then, Jack?” Daniel asked quietly.

“He's a Tok'ra! That's enough.”

“You trust some of the Tok'ra. You trust Selmak.”

Jack stood up and kicked his chair, which toppled over with a bang. “Damnit, Daniel. We need out of here. I'm not doing anyone any good in here. You know I can't stand to be useless.”

/You should bargain.\

/Not with that.\

“I believe you, Jack. It's just that we haven't even met Kavith...”

“Fine. You want to talk to him? Promise me you'll get me some fresh air and I'll let you chat for a minute.”

/A minute?\

/And then you prove you're trustworthy to me and get out of my way again!\

Daniel's eyes flicked upward to the darkened observation windows. Jack realized they were being watched. “I think I can make that happen,” he said.

/I told you it's not hard, friend. You have my word. Just let go.\

It was hard, at least for Jack. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine not doing, holding still, not thinking.

“Jack?”

“Just give me a minute here,” he complained.

/You're trying too hard, friend.\

With a wrench, Jack suddenly felt his body move without him, his muscles giving a small spasm. He felt panicked and infuriated.

/You just needed a little help,\ Kavith sent.

Turning toward Daniel, Kavith said, “It is nice to finally meet you, Dr. Jackson.” Jack heard his own voice distorted and just deeply wrong, felt his vocal chords vibrate and the air move through his throat in a new way. It was all so wrong. But Kavith was in charge.

“Kavith?”

_“Yes. That is my name. Forgive Jack. He is struggling with this greatly.”_

“And you're not?”

_“I am as well. It was never my intention to take an unwilling host.”_

“But you can see now that Jack is unwilling.”

_“To say the least. But you are the ones preventing me from moving on now.”_

“Will you move on?”

There was a pause and Jack felt himself begin to panic. /You will move on! This is my body and I don't want you here!\

_“I hope to.”_

“What does that mean?”

/Yeah, what does that mean!\

/It means that by confining us here, your people are making this harder and harder for us.\

_“Some of my brethren are good at taking and leaving hosts easily. I'm afraid I am not one of those. The longer I stay with Jack, the greater the risk to him when I leave.”_

“Why?” Daniel asked, sounding surprised. “We've seen both the goa'uld and the Tok'ra change hosts many times. And Jolinar assured Sam she'd be able to leave her.”

_“You've seen symbiotes change hosts when the previous host was ready to die or near death. It does not surprise you that the host dies. As for Jolinar, she was always unusually talented at changing hosts. But also, I am given to understand that I have already been here for longer than the scant time Jolinar visited you.”_

“Are you saying if you leave Jack, he'll die?” Daniel's eyes flickered up to the tinted windows.

/Is that what you're saying?\ Jack was furious and scared.

_“The longer I stay, the harder it will be. If you cannot find a suitable, willing host soon, then you need to allow us passage through the stargate to seek out the Tok'ra or find a new host of our own choosing.”_

Anger and fear coursing through him, Jack reached for control, wanted his body back. /Your minute's up!\

Reluctantly, he felt Kavith let go, knowing there was more to say, but not wanting to hear it.

“Jack?” Daniel asked.

“Daniel, you've got to… I can't live like this!”

Daniel nodded. “I'll do what I can.”

* * * 

He wanted to be grateful for the fresh air. It was no more than what he'd asked for, after all. His first glimpse of the sun in two weeks and he could literally feel his skin soaking in the vitamins and warmth. However, he couldn't stop the growing panic that was rising inside him. 

It was Kavith's first glimpse of Earth's sun ever. /Is your whole planet this rocky?\ Kavith was also close to panic. Their shared sense of emotion was the only thing keeping Jack from trying to tear the symbiote out of his head and letting them both die.

He didn't answer in words, but he couldn't seem to help now that a question Kavith might ask that had an answer in his memories meant the memories would come bubbling up. He thought of the forests in Germany, the deserts in Iraq, the cabin in Minnesota.

They were just outside the Mountain, still on the base, just above ground, right outside one of the checkpoints. A baker's dozen of SF's were scattered around him and he suspected there were probably even more positioned above as snipers on the side of the hill. All ready to shot to kill if need be. But they were keeping a fair distance. The whole point was that he needed some space. So they were mostly giving it to him, just ready to kill him if they judged it to be too much space.

Daniel was there too, sitting on a small outcropping of rock, watching Jack carefully as Jack paced in anxious circles.

“Why don't you sit?”

“I'd rather run a marathon. Do you know how much sitting I've done in the last week weeks?”

/And now my knees would let me run a whole marathon.\ He didn't want to think thoughts like this, but it was hard not to. An old shoulder injury was similarly no longer an ache. A scar on his side from an infected wound he had in prison in Iraq had faded to nothing more than a pale sliver. A toenail that had been cut years ago and never grown back exactly right was now smooth and healthy looking. When you live with your body, you get used to these little imperfections. They make you who you are. Except, not anymore.

Jack paced for another few minutes before giving up and sitting next to Daniel.

“I'm trying, really,” Daniel said quietly, and Jack realized that out here in the open, they could talk without being heard. Despite the SF's everywhere, it was relatively private. “Sam and I have been trying to talk Hammond into letting us accompany you through the gate. Teal'c left for Chulak yesterday. There was an emergency. Somehow all the rebel Jaffa have been going missing. He's trying to track down what's happening.”

“So it's partially a question of who gets this crazy save Jack O'Neill mission,” Jack said.

“Partly, yes. And partly if it's happening at all. There's such an air of waiting still. Hammond is under an immense amount of pressure not to let you out of his sight. The NID would like to come take you into custody and see if they can develop their own method of symbiote extraction. It's only the fact that they think the Tok'ra might show up again and might be useful or might be willing to trade something useful for you – you know how they think – that's keeping them from outright violating the treaty and just swarming in to try and take you into their custody.”

“Damnit.”

“They think the Tok'ra are going to get back in touch any minute. The problem is, sometimes we've gone for months without hearing from them. And now we know they're on the run. They probably suffered other losses. I'm sure they've written off Kavith at this point. They have no reason to come looking for him. If any of their people had escaped, they'd have got to the rendezvous. But some of the higher ups just aren't getting it.”

“Daniel.”

“I know. I know. Sam and I are… strategizing.”

/They can't risk their own lives and careers for me.\

/They're your friends. They love you.\

“Daniel, I know what you're thinking. You and Carter – especially Carter – you can't do anything that will end in disaster. The program needs both of you too much. Earth needs both of you too much. I may be out for the count here, but that's no reason for you to end up that way.”

“Jack.” Daniel had a million ways to say his name. Urgently in need of help, excitedly ready to share something he only half understood, and dozens of shades of exasperated. This was exasperated. In one word, Daniel could convey how silly he thought Jack was being. Of course he wanted to go down in flames on Jack's behalf, whether it did any good or not.

The sun was hitting Daniel's face. He was studiously looking away from Jack. It was a look that said to the SF's, we're not plotting anything or even really talking to each other. He looked so casually innocent even while Jack knew his brain was working at a million miles a minute. Jack forgot sometimes what an intense connection he felt with Daniel, had felt with him from the moment they stepped through the gate together for the first time.

“Just get me through the damned gate,” Jack said.

Without thinking, he reached his hand across to Daniel's bare arm. His fingers stroked the skin lightly, curled slightly, felt the connection of touch then trailed up his arm toward his face.

Daniel turned his head slowly and looked at him straight in the eyes. “Jack?”

Of the million ways Daniel had said his name, this had never been among them. It was a question, confused and unsure and curious.

Jack looked down at his fingers, stroking Daniel's arm and jerked them away. God, what was he doing?

A strange sense of panic swept through him. He didn't understand what had just happened.

/Calm down, friend.\

/Why did you make me do that?\ he demanded. It was okay to casually hug a friend. Okay to gently punch a guy in the arm. Okay to pat a team member on the back. He liked touch, liked to touch his friends. But this was different.

/I didn't make you do anything.\

/That wasn't me!\

/I'm sorry, Jack. I'm trying very hard to stop us from the blending. But it is becoming difficult.\

Jack felt a sense of panic. It was palpable enough that the SF's, who had been milling around looking casual, now closed in, exchanging a look with Daniel, who shook his head to keep them from interfering, at least for now.

He wanted to go away, to not be there anymore. He felt ashamed. He felt like he was watching himself in a movie, not actually inside his own mind.

/Go ahead.\

Jack didn't know what Kavith was telling him to go ahead and do, but seconds later he understood because he felt the same shudder of muscles leaving his control that he had felt the day before when he agreed to let Kavith speak to Daniel.

_“Dr. Jackson. I apologize. Jack is struggling with what is happening.”_

Daniel looked surprised, but he nodded again to the SF's that they were fine. “What is happening, Kavith?” He glanced down at his arm and Jack's withdrawn hand, furrowing his brow.

_“I told you it is difficult to keep the host and the symbiote separated for long.”_

“The goa'uld seem to do it,” Daniel observed.

From his place inside his mind, hiding, trying to hum away the world around him, Jack felt Kavith bristle.

_“I am not a goa'uld.”_

“Sorry,” Daniel said. “I'm just trying to understand. I don't even know what just happened.” He cocked his head and Jack tried not to see it. Tried not to put it into words, even words the snake could hear, words like, I started to make a pass at my very male best friend.

/He is not upset with you,\ Kavith sent.

_“A goa'uld accomplishes control of the host by completely suppressing the host's personality and self. It will use pain to achieve its task. The human mind retreats entirely.”_

“But the host remains,” Daniel insisted.

_“Not every host.”_

Daniel shook his head. “That's not what we've seen.”

_“I'm sorry to be blunt, Dr. Jackson. You have limited experience. Some strong personalities remain but most are so victimized, so terrorized that they may as well be dead. Death would be preferable. Many of the hosts the Tok'ra have managed to save from the goa'uld have been catatonic or insane after removal of the symbiote.”_

Daniel made no noise.

_“You are thinking of your wife,”_ Kavith said. He returned Jack's hand to Daniel's arm and squeezed slightly then moved his hands back to rest in his lap. _“I wish I could tell you she did not suffer.”_

Daniel shook his head again. “Are you trying to tell me Jack is suffering?”

_“I'm trying to tell you that this is not our way. The blending is our way. But it changes the host and changes the symbiote too. Jack is suffering but not in the way you mean. He is unwilling to go through the blending. It scares him that it might be happening against both our wills.”_

Daniel nodded and let silence settle. The sun was going down over the mountains and dusk was growing around them. “Tomorrow,” he said very quietly. “I'll talk to Sam.”

* * *

_She stood on the deck of the city, looking over the shiny buildings, skirt fluttering at her knees in the wind. “Your job is done. It is time to leave and rejoin the cause.” She didn't want to hear this. Heavy, calloused hands reached around her from behind, caressing her. A rough, unshaven face nuzzled at her neck. “It's a beautiful city.” She looked out over the metal of the skyscrapers and the purple streaked sky beyond. She wouldn't leave. She wouldn't go with him. It didn't matter what he did or said._

Jack awoke with a start. This was becoming a routine. He'd now had a dozen visions of the snake's past. Memories that seemed as real as his own. Part of him wanted to ask, but a bigger part of him wanted to retreat and hide again. Only that meant giving up control to the snake.

/Ilenia was my host for almost three centuries,\ Kavith offered. /She stayed there on Mayshioptora for almost fifty years, against the wishes of the Tok'ra Council.\

Jack wouldn't ask more. Wouldn't. Didn't want to know. Only wanted to purge the memory of being a woman from his mind. Purge all the memories that kept bleeding through from Kavith from his mind. None of them were him. None of them.

Jack felt waves of deep sadness moving through the snake.

/My first host was also unwilling,\ Kavith said sadly. /My queen, Kishar, had all her primta put in hosts and told us to stand against the System Lords. She was killed and the System Lords hunted her children down. Only those few of us who joined the Tok'ra survived. My host was Bew. We struggled to understand each other. I was young and arrogant. And then he was killed in the fight against the goa'uld and I swore that I would never again take an unwilling host.\

Jack grunted. He didn't want to hear anything about the snake's past. /Stop talking,\ he sent, then tried to close all the thoughts out of his head.

 

* * *

The note was under his cereal bowl in the morning, brought by a stoic looking SF. The cereal didn't taste right. This was the third day of it tasting off. The milk tasted sour and wrong too. The orange juice smelled too sweet. He ate it all anyway and ignored the sense that something was wrong.

There was nothing to gather. He would be on his own if this worked. There was no if. It had to work. He spent the day pacing back and forth then trying not to pace back and forth.

/Do one of the language puzzles your friend brought you. They're delightful.\

/A crossword?\

/I've never seen such a thing before. I like codes and patterns. They're clever. You need a distraction.\

Jack wondered about Kavith's enjoyment of codes and without warning, without falling asleep, he was plunged into one of those memories that wasn't his but felt like it belonged to him.

He had the text in front of him and he was trying to concentrate. “Hurry up,” a vibrating voice said. He looked up. It was Gershaw. She looked cold and annoyed. “I could use some quiet,” he said. “There's no time. We have to know when they'll attack.” He turned back to the text. This time, something popped out at him. He began to circle some of the characters in each word. He had to be sure it wasn't random…

/You're a decoder for the Tok'ra.\

/When it arises. It's one of my few useful talents.\

Jack wouldn't let himself question that. He didn't want to be plunged into the answer. He could sense Kavith also trying to stay silent, trying not to offer, not to question. I bind unto myself. Myself, myself. But he went and picked up the crossword book and a pen.

He was still sitting there at 1700, shift change, when Carter came in. She let the door not quite shut. “I brought you some of the cookies from the bakery by my apartment, Sir.” She held out a bag.

He stood up and walked over to her. He could see her fingers counting down. He took the small bag and blinked, once. He knew she'd understand. Sorry, Carter. Sorry.

He spun her around and knocked her on the back of her head, letting her fall to the floor. She crumpled and he wished this hadn't been part of the plan. It would have been so much better if it hadn't.

From there, the SF's weren't ready for him. The control room was in the midst of shift changeover. Only Walter was still at the desk. He knew he had only seconds before the alarms began to sound and the whole thing would be over.

“Sorry, Sargent,” Jack said. It was almost too easy to knock Walter out. Tok'ra strength, he realized. It was doing more than shoring up old knee injuries.

He executed the dialing program just as the sirens began to sound. One corridor to the gateroom. He had beat them there, though he could hear the pounding feet of the marines and SF's gearing up, coming. He could feel Kavith's urgency pulsing through him alongside his own. They were deeply in sync. Run, go, get away, now, now, now. He didn't want to think about what that meant or how it felt.

The gateroom doors opened then shut again as he hit the button. They wouldn't open again until someone cleaned out the virus Carter had written. Four SF's in the gateroom. All of them already out, weapons piled safely away.

The last chevron locked and he heard the pounding on the doors behind him and the voice of the general over the intercom.

“Jack!” General Hammond bellowed.

“Jack!” a second voice said.

He spun around. Daniel was in the corner of the gateroom, hands in his pockets.

“You don't want to do this, son,” Hammond said, his voice amplified by the speaker.

“Geez, Daniel, the whole point was that you weren't supposed to get caught.” Jack looked at the downed SF's. They looked so peaceful.

“I'll be okay.” Daniel walked quickly over and handed him a small daypack and a zat. Well, that explained how he took out the SF's.

“Danny,” Jack said, worried, exasperated.

Daniel grinned. He grabbed Jack's arm and then leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. Shivers ran through Jack and he pulled back. “Come back to us,” he whispered in Jack's ear.

“Colonel O'Neill!” General Hammond's voice was loud.

“And do it quickly,” Daniel whispered.

Jack understood. He couldn't wait. He used the zat on Daniel, letting him crumple below the ramp. This was direct insubordination. And he was leaving Daniel to God knows what fate. Be he couldn't be like this. He had to get away. He took a running jump through the gate.


	3. Stuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Kavith look for a solution.

Jack felt like a prisoner in his own body.

/You can take control if you need to.\

But what would Jack do with that control? They had needed to set the communication beacon. Only Kavith knew how. Then they needed to blend in on Talshion, a planet only Kavith had visited before. Then they needed to go to the hospital and offer help healing the sick. Again, a task only Kavith had known how to do.

From the Tok'ra supply cache, Kavith had taken the hand device. And now, for the second day, he would use it, quietly helping some of the injuries in the hospital.

Talshion looked a little like a mix between what Jack recalled from early industrial European history mixed up with Indian architecture and people. There were small factories throughout the little city where Kavith led them. They wove clothes and fabricated metal gears and ground cornmeal. The funny thing was that it all ran on naquadah. There were small inefficient generators everywhere, powering everything from little rides for children that were reminiscent of miniature carousels to mammoth vehicles that steamrolled between the cities, carrying passengers atop tank-like treads.

Kavith clearly adored Talshion. They had come here to try and find a new host since their efforts to contact the Tok'ra hadn't paid off immediately. It had been between this and going to an active goa'uld world to try and steal better transit. But the timetable on that looked bleak to both of them. By the time they managed to get a ship and take it to the rendezvous point, a place that might well be abandoned once everyone had congregated, was longer than either of them felt they should wait. Kavith was so sure they'd find a host on Talshion that Jack agreed it wasn't worth the risks of stealing a ship.

The minute they walked into the hospital on the second day, Tabinta, the nurse who Kavith had faithfully followed around the previous day, ran up to him anxiously.

“There was a ceiling collapse at a waterfront factory this morning,” she said, brusquely businesslike. Jack liked Tabinta. She was older, with a round, wrinkled face, and stood for no nonsense. She excelled at triage. “This way. There are a few cases our medicine cannot help.”

It was still strange to Jack that the people on this world knew the Tok'ra. Or, not the Tok'ra so much. They knew Kavith. He had been a fixture there off and on for nearly his whole lifetime. He was able to slide in and explain himself in just the right terms.

“Anything I can do,” Kavith said, in Jack's voice. Jack still wasn't sure what was worse: the snake using him to talk in that creepy reverberated voice or the snake borrowing his voice to sound normal.

“This way,” Tabinta directed. They made their way down the hallway into a bright room with thick glass windows. Talshion didn't have pane glass, Jack had noticed. Instead there were thick glass bricks where you'd expect windows. This room was walled with them.

Between privacy curtains, Kavith could see the various victims of the collapsed roof in beds. Most were scraped up or sporting broken bones. They could see the bright yellow casts being applied. In the back of the great room, there were three factory victims who were in much worse shape.

Kavith quickly triaged the first victim as beyond his help. 

/We'd burn out our energy helping her at all,\ he explained after one quick exploration with the hand device. /Severe brain damage.\

He shook his head to Tabinta and moved to the next patient. This case was more hopeful. “Collapsed lung, internal bleeding,” he said, musing aloud. “Let me see the last patient. But I think I can help this young woman in a moment.”

The last victim was worse off. Even without the device, it was obvious that she also likely had brain damage. Her skull was fractured and part of it was misshapen. What was scary was that she was awake and semi-coherent.

“Jarusha,” Tabinta said. “Help's here.”

“Naught one, work's done. Two three, dance with me… Naught one, naught one...”

“Jarusha,” Tabinta said again.

Jack felt Kavith's interest pique intensely. He lifted the hand device and used it to probe through her. Jack couldn't read what Kavith learned. It was there, but he didn't know how to understand it. He just waited. He was just waiting, begging, hoping to get out of this.

/I can't heal her with the device. But I could if she accepted me as a host,\ Kavith announced.

Jack felt hope flare inside him. However, he felt an intense sadness from Kavith.

“I'm going to heal the young woman in the other bed,” he said. “Stay with her.”

Tabinta nodded. The young woman, Jarusha, was now silent and seemed to have taken on an intent, unsure look.

Healing the young woman with the collapsed lung seemed like magic to Jack. Everything about the hand device seemed magic. It tore out your insides and burned your skin or knit the fabric of you back together all via naquadah yet it never touched a thing. Doohickeys. Stuff and nonsense if he hadn't seen what it could do dozens of times over.

/It's a complex piece of machinery.\

/Widgets. Gadgets. Thingamabobber.\

/Your use of language amuses me, Jack.\

Jack felt hungry and annoyed after they healed the young woman's lungs. She still looked pale and frail, but Kavith seemed certain she'd survive with decent care. He turned himself back to the final curtain and Jarusha.

“She's been babbling childhood rhymes like that since she came in,” Tabinta said. “It must have something to do with her injuries.”

“It does,” Kavith said.

“Four, five, I'm alive,” Jarusha said.

“Jarusha, listen to me,” Kavith said, crouching next to the low stone pallet bed. “I want to ask something of you. You're going to die soon, but there may be another way.”

“Naught, naught,” Jarusha said.

Kavith stood tall. _“Nurse Tabinta,”_ he said, taking on his own, resonating voice, _“she cannot live long like this, though she might survive for weeks or even months this way. I would like to leave my body and take hers as a host, like in the old stories of my people. That way, I can heal her. However, to do this, I must first ask her. And to ask her, I must relieve the injury in her brain just a little bit to help make her coherent. If she says no, or if the transfer goes wrong, then she will die much quicker. Perhaps within the hour. If she says yes and the transfer goes well, then she will live. I cannot make this choice for her. What say you in this matter?”_

To her credit, Tabinta doesn't balk at Kavith's sudden voice change. It's part of the legends and history on Talshion, Jack knows, but it still seems odd. It's as if a leprechaun or a fairy popped up and you just casually accepted them and went on about your business.

“She'll die no matter what if she doesn't do it?”

_“Yes. A slow death, maybe. It's possible her ability to feel pain has been compromised. She might not be suffering.”_

“But she's not in her right head.”

_“No. She cannot understand what's happening to her. But when I relieve the pressure, she'll likely feel a great deal of pain shortly.”_

“Do it then and get it done,” Tabinta said.

Kavith nodded. _“The transfer is dangerous for myself and my current host. I would ask that you stay here with him and watch over him for me.”_

/Gee, thanks.\

/My friend, I cannot begin to say how bereft I am to leave you. I hope this works for your sake. But know that I will think of what might have been had we completed the blending.\

Jack felt uncomfortable. He wanted to give a flip remark, but what was the point when Kavith could sense what he really felt, which was disturbed. It was as if they were lovers breaking up. Except he didn't feel like lovers. He had never wanted this. It had taken everything he had to tolerate it for long enough to get Kavith to move on.

/More intimate even than lovers,\ Kavith sent. /The bond between host and symbiote goes beyond mere lovers or spouses. In a good joining, I feel something deeper than anything you have felt for any lover.\

/How should you know?\ But Jack knew how Kavith knew. He knew the snake had been through his memories just as he had been through many of the snake's. They couldn't help it.

/Just get it over with,\ Jack groused, bristly and deeply unsettled.

Kavith lifted his hand and began to mend enough of her brain injury to ensure she could respond. It was perhaps ten minutes later that Jarusha suddenly cried out in pain.

“It hurts! By all the gods and all reason, it hurts!” She began weeping, tears of pain and suffering. “Help me. Please.”

_“Jarusha. I am Kavith. You have a choice now. I am Tok'ra. If you wish to join with me, I can heal your wounds. But we would stay joined. If you do not do this, you will die. Even if you agree, there is a risk. And you must be sure. This cannot be easily undone.”_

Jack watched with Kavith, breath held.

“Like the old stories?” the woman asked.

_“Exactly like that.”_

“I always thought that was nonsense.” She gasped and moaned again. A new trickle of blood began to run down her face from her nose. “By all reason,” she cried, tears running down her face.

_“Jarusha?”_

“Yes. Yes. Anything,” she said.

Kavith leaned forward, bringing Jack's mouth to hers in an open kiss.

First was the sensation of scraping in his throat. Then Jack felt a wrenching pain in his skull and a sensation that all the air was leaving him and then he knew no more.

* * *

The light was the eerie purple bio-luminescence of Talshion lamps. The bed was a hard, warmed pallet and the cloth the factory woven cloth that was everywhere.

He was still on Talshion. And he knew from the moment he was conscious that he was not alone.

/Here, friend. I am sorry.\ Kavith sent waves of deep sadness and regret. And underlying it all was guilt. Profound, unstoppable guilt.

And then, unbidden, unbound, the memory of what had happened. Kavith struggling to take control of Jarusha. Establishing only her hearing and realizing her vision was mostly gone. Hearing the nurse's cries that Jack had stopped breathing. A choice had to be made. It was a choice Kavith had already made days ago. He couldn't see Jack die. And a sense of deep connection and adoration filled Jack.

It disgusted him. The way the snake was open to him. The very idea that a parasite could love him.

/It's not a romantic love. I spent too much time in your head, my friend. You are an admirable and interesting person. One I would be honored to spend years with.\ But a desperate, accepting sadness accompanying the thought. Kavith knew how Jack would react. Knew and was unable to stop himself from going to save Jack's life and dooming him to being joined with the Tok'ra.

/You let that woman die,\ Jack accused.

/She was dead anyway.\

/I was dead anyway!\

/I couldn't be the cause of your death, my friend.\

/I am not your friend!\

Jack looked around the room. It was the great room he'd been in before. There were curtains around the pallet and the quiet murmurs of noise from behind the other curtains. It was nighttime. Most of the patients were sleeping and the space seemed to have fewer sufferers than earlier. He didn't even know how long had passed.

/Only a few hours,\ Kavith sent.

/Don't do that!\ Jack tried to bellow the thought through his head.

He left the hospital without a word. He went back to the dormitory where he'd taken lodging the night before. It was late, but not so late that the streets were empty. His things were still locked up safe. The pack had come from Daniel. Inside were a few things of use. A radio, presumably so he could talk to the SGC through the gate even though he didn't have a GDO, a knife, several MRE's, a basic med kit, a space blanket. In the front pocket was a note from Daniel. It didn't say much, but Jack glanced at it as he checked his gear. It was just comforting to see his friend's writing. Daniel had also put the photo of Charlie he kept on his desk into the front pocket with the note. Jack looked at it, then shoved it back inside the pocket and zipped it up. There was a sick finality to the fact that Daniel had enclosed it at all. It was clearly in case Jack couldn't return. And now he couldn't.

He took the pack, paid the woman behind the desk, and walked off.


	4. An Irrevocable Solution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack comes up with a deadly solution, but something unexpected gets in the way.

He sat under the tarp as the rains poured around him. And while he didn't want to admit it, he was thinking about his options.

He wondered if the rain was going to let up. Not that it really mattered.

The answer came to him in memory. Autumn rains on Talshion. Heavy and torrential, but brief. Being caught out in them as a child bringing in the harvest of heavy cheenee squash. In another lifetime, holing up with the encoded plans for a goa'uld space station, trying to crack them while the rains came down in buckets. In yet another lifetime, a lover's quarrel that started in the baths in the city and ended on the street in the autumn rain, yelling at the man that he loved him.

For the last week, as Jack took them walking straight away from the city, into the mountains and aimlessly but determinedly just away, Kavith had refrained from speaking often in his mind. But he understood now how much the symbiote had been holding back beforehand. Kavith had been trying to keep a wall between them. Now, the wall had come crashing down. All pretense that they were separate, could be separate, had disappeared.

Without Kavith, he would die. Without Kavith, he was nothing.

It didn't matter how far or where he ran. It would always be true.

And it was death he wanted. He hadn't eaten in two days. Kavith was doggedly keeping him from feeling the bite of starvation. He didn't really think he'd die that way anyway. He just didn't want to eat. Didn't want strength. Not for anything but his final task.

The tools at his disposal were fairly simple. He had the knife. A good, solid knife. Large enough for hunting or stripping down a tree branch or any one of a number of tasks. Definitely adequate to slash his wrists if he could get the courage to go that way. He also had enough cord to make a simple rope if he decided he wanted to hang himself.

He had the zat Daniel had given him in the gateroom. It was useless for this. What he needed was a gun but Daniel hadn't included one. And this world didn't have projectile weapons like that. 

None of these were the ways he'd ever thought he would go. He needed another option.

From inside him, he could feel Kavith's desperation, a silent, screaming voice that joined with his own survival instinct - an instinct so strong it had saved his life a dozen times over - calling to him in unison, simply saying, “Don't.”

But the more the snake didn't want him to die, the more the snake loved him, the more the snake suffered, the more he wanted to do it. He needed a way out.

His hand fingered over the radio Daniel had left him. And then, the solution came to him.

/Jack, no!\ It was the first thing articulated he had heard from the snake in days. It only reinforced his belief that it was the right decision.

He could even send a note. It would go through the iris because it was so small. He knew that from the past. They'd sent a note to themselves once before. That way they wouldn't worry. He knew his team. They were out there now, hoping, sitting on their hands. They would need closure to move on and not further screw up careers and endanger the program. This way, the powers that be would know he wasn't compromised. Or, at least, he'd give whatever reassurance he could.

He could have just stood in front of the event horizon as the wormhole established itself. He'd seen people die that way. It looked clean and fast. It also looked strangely horrific. There was something violent about it. Not that Jack minded the violence. It was just that let his every molecule disintegrate as he smashed against the iris was somehow easier. More fitting. He could go home this way. Back to Earth. Forever and never.

* * *

The gate on Talshion was just outside the city. A guardhouse sat next to it and an armory filled with staff weapons. Kavith had helped build the stone armory himself hundreds of years ago. He had spent five years erasing the gate address from every ruin, every computer, every goa'uld database, every single place he could find. And then he had come back to Talshion with staff weapons and instructions. Build the guardhouse, man it always.

Jack could admit a grudging respect for Kavith's plan. And now that his own plan was in motion, he could even share it. Because nothing mattered any more. Even talking to the snake was no big deal.

/You should have made them bury it.\

/They trade goods with two other worlds.\

/It's a good place. You just wanted to keep your bolthole safe. Wasn't worth the risk for them.\

/Maybe,\ Kavith admitted. /But they're thriving now. Thriving still.\

/Do all the Tok'ra have their own secret planets where they pretend to be visiting leprechauns?\

Kavith mentally chuckled. /Just me, friend. They think I'm a bit of an oddball.\

/Don't call me friend.\ But it was rote.

Jack was cheerfully numb, resigned to this fate. The snake was numb too, sad and guilty but numb.

The gate came into view in the distance, over the edge of the next hill. They could see the roof of the stone guardhouse and a cluster of activity there, people moving like miniatures in the distance.

/You are my friend,\ Kavith sent. /I am sorry to have put you in this position. I deserve whatever fate you choose for us. I broke the highest law of the Tok'ra. And now I suffer the consequences with you. I would say gladly, but the truth is that I wish it could be different, even though I know it cannot.\

Jack didn't reply. He had noticed something unusual about the movement around the gate.

The guards weren't in their usual uniforms of green and orange. In fact, the people by the gate didn't look like Talshionites at all. They had lighter hair and skin. Then one of them turned toward the hills.

/Jaffa!\

Jack dropped down, though he was certain he hadn't been seen. What were Jaffa doing on Talshion? Nothing good.

He felt Kavith's desperation. If there were Jaffa here, some goa'uld had sent them. And they were looking for something, perhaps here for a choosing, perhaps looking to colonize. The Tau'ri had disrupted the normal balance of things so much in recent years. Too many goa'uld were on the run, changing locations, renewing old mines, finding new boltholes, creating new chaos in places they hadn't visited in years. And if one goa'uld knew about Talshion, others could come too. The progress they'd made, clawing their way out of superstition, creating factories, cultivating the coarse soil, figuring out how to use naquadah. The naquadah. Most of it came from mines to the south. There was no way a goa'uld would pass up the chance to enslave a planet and take what they could. And the population. The goa'uld didn't like population booms like Talshion had had. There were now hundreds of towns and many cities dotted all over the continent. They could end that. There would be panic. Would people realize the old gods had returned? And…

/Stop it!\ Jack growled. /I get it. You're worried about them.\

The utter panic paused though Jack could still feel the symbiote's fear and then his anger.

/This is your people's fault. You go gallivanting across the galaxy without a clue about the ways in which your actions are affecting people light years away. You don't have any sense of the bigger picture. Just, kill this goa'uld, now kill that one.\

/Better than spending a few millennia doing nothing.\

/We have done plenty. Stayed alive for one. And kept the situation from getting any worse.\

/Great way to live your people have going there. Hiding in caves doing nothing.\

/You've seen what I've done.\

/I've seen what you've done. Avoided fighting mostly. Refused orders over and over from your commanders.\

/To stay behind and help people!\

Jack was hit with the flood of memories that were sometimes triggered when he wondered something or when Kavith paged through his own past. He saw Kavith's hosts staying to save Talshion, the work of removing the address from every address book he could find. And other times, times he came here and spent a year healing with the hand device, just living among the people. How hard he had worked after he had first managed to use Lord Yu's Jaffa to drive Eshu off Talshion, only to fool him into abandoning the planet soon thereafter.

And there was anger, anger that the balance he'd so carefully achieved had been disrupted.

Jack clutched at his head. /Well then do something!\ Jack had sent a mental bellow, forcing his thought through the uncontrolled rush of memory that Kavith had been hurling at him. /Don't waste your time crying over it, go fucking stop them!\

Before Jack could realize what frustration had driven him to suggest, he felt the seizing of his muscles and felt himself lose control.


	5. The Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Kavith find a purpose together, also a small kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sanja just kept showing up in various bits of this that I was writing and finally I allowed her to stay.

Jack watched the ruins of the town smoldering in the valley below him. None of this made any sense.

They had tracked the Jaffa out of the city and into the villages. Other than the contingent they left behind to guard the stargate, the Jaffa had left the city alone. Kavith had talked to the city elders and convinced them not to fight the Jaffa at the gate for now, but to set up a perimeter around the city for protection. It killed him to do it, but if they had attacked the Jaffa at the gate, they might have sent reinforcements. And they needed to know what the thirty or so Jaffa who had gone marching out into the countryside were even doing.

But by the time they followed their trail to the first stop, they'd already basically decimated the whole town. Kavith was enraged.

It had been three days since Jack had been about to walk through the gate and let his molecules scatter against a wall of trinium. Three days that Kavith had been in control, unrelinquishing, filled with righteous anger and purpose. But now the symbiote was so exhausted and emotional that Jack felt the whole body shaking uncontrollably.

He had mostly been silent. This was Kavith's planet, Kavith's op. Kavith was the one who was filled with fury driving them forward. He felt the fury and it was familiar, at least. He didn't want to admit that it almost felt good, reassuring. He let his own numbed desire for death ebb in the face of the fury.

But he didn't want to say anything. He just drifted, just let himself be carried along in a way that he had never experienced before. The few days before when Kavith had mostly stayed in control, Jack had felt like he was fighting it every step of the way. This time he was pushed back, watching, just being. Kavith wasn't being careful with him anymore. Kavith could care less about Jack O'Neill as long as Jack was going to stay out of his way while he somehow singlehandedly stopped these Jaffa. It was a side of the symbiote Jack hadn't seen before. It was different.

Now, with Kavith in an exhausted panic, looking down at the ruined village, Jack finally had something to say. /Get yourself up, soldier! Go down there and do something about it!\

Kavith didn't articulate a reply, but Jack knew the feeling of hopelessness that had crept into the emotions he was feeling. Kavith was too grieved to do anything about the destruction below. He was too angry and distraught and he didn't have a real plan. He had followed the Jaffa looking for intel. He expected to find them at the naquadah mines, but they passed them by. Then he thought they might be at one of the old temple sites, but they didn't go there either.

/Get up!\ Jack bellowed again to the symbiote. /Man up!\

Kavith bristled, but even annoyance was better than the paralysis that was setting in. He began making his way down into the town, holding the zat at his side carefully.

When they arrived, things were even worse than they expected. Dead bodies with staff weapon burns were scattered about the streets. Several fires burned. The wounded were too numerous to triage easily.

Kavith stood dumbly at the edge of the marketplace, seeing the chaos. There weren't swarms of people. The town looked like it probably only had a couple thousand people. But the scale of destruction within that was astounding.

 _“What happened?”_ he finally croaked at a young man who is gathering water at the well.

The man startled when he saw the glow of Kavith's eyes and heard the sound of his voice. “Tok'ra?”

_“Just tell me.”_

“Thirty men, with golden marks on their heads, carrying magic stick weapons like from the old epics. They burned and killed.”

_“But why?”_

The man didn't know. He said something about how they wanted a box.

Kavith kept wandering through the town, asking everyone who was able to tell him what happened, but the stories were too jumbled. There was a box, some of them said. No, they were after a girl. No, a magic rock. No, they wanted slaves. It wasn't until he reached the town center that he realized some of the Jaffa were still there.

There were at least three of them. He sensed them before he saw them, but that meant they likely sensed the naquadah in his blood as well.

/Go,\ Jack urged. /You can't wait.\ He was there now, not only drifting in the background, but there with Kavith, paying attention, wanting to help.

Kavith hurried into the square. There, he saw that amid fires that still burned, three Jaffa stood over a huddled mass of the town's people, killing them one by one.

“Bring me what I ask for!” a Jaffa with bronze skin and a deep baritone shouted to the crowd. “The Padreescatala!”

The people were crying. “We don't have this thing. We don't even know what it is!” a woman screamed, her face red with anger.

The Jaffa turned his staff weapon on her and she fell in the midst of the crowd of people penned into the square.

Jack felt Kavith's anger rise up in force. The burning fury Jack had felt before had seemed powerful, but it was nothing compared to this. He could barely remember ever having felt anything so consuming. The power of the mind that was now dominating his body was frightening in ways it hadn't been before.

Kavith dropped everything he had been carrying behind a collapsed building. He gripped the zat and then did something Jack had never seen before. He opened up the bottom of the zat'nika'tel and twisted the base in an unexpected way. Jack had no idea what he was doing but he watched and felt as Kavith basically rewired the zat.

Then he strode into the square, eyes glowing.

The Jaffa couldn't miss him. Not only did they sense the naquadah in him, but he really made an entrance, striding forward with the sort of cocky look Jack had come to associate with the goa'uld fixed on his face.

“Who are you?” the lead Jaffa shouted.

 _“Your god,”_ Kavith announced, practically sneering. Then he threw the zat out in front of him. When it landed, it exploded in a wave of energy that knocked everyone out for yards around. Kavith went down and Jack felt his body fall hard on the stones in the street.

When he came to, he knew it was just seconds later. Kavith had him up and moving before anyone else, the knife in his hand, headed for the Jaffa in the square, running forward despite the pounding pain in Jack's head. In a smooth motion, before the first Jaffa woke up from the zat blast, he slit his throat and took his staff weapon.

As that Jaffa bled out on the ground, he fired the staff weapon at the other two Jaffa, who were struggling awake to consciousness. They never had a chance.

It was over. There were piles of bodies everywhere, some dead, some injured, many stunned from the zat blast radius.

Kavith's anger still raged through Jack. It felt like a wildfire out of control. He took the staff weapon and walked with it. There were still more Jaffa out there. Now he had staff weapons. He would kill them all. Then he would walk all three days back to the gate and kill the ones near the city. He would gut them and pull out their prim'ta and watch them die gasping on the dry ground.

That's when the girl hurled herself on him.

Jack felt as all that rage inside turned toward her.

She couldn't knock him over. She was too small for that. Perhaps just eight or nine years old, with messy black hair and a tattered dress. She was clutching a knife. “What did you do? You murderer!” she screamed.

Kavith, determined to get to the other Jaffa and kill them as quickly as possible, knocked her off and kept walking, but the girl came again, picking herself up from the dirt and running at him with full speed, knife outstretched.

This time, he picked up the Staff Weapon and pointed it at her. _“Go.”_

/You can't\ Jack screamed within his own head. /Kavith!\

Kavith wasn't listening. And that full force of the anger, the incredible crushing power of the mind behind it, was unrelenting. Jack was nothing but a passive prisoner now. This must be what it's like to really be snaked, he thought.

/What was the point of that anger?\ Jack asked. /All that anger because you supposedly love these people. And now you're going to threaten a little girl?\ He felt like he was hurling himself at the wall of Kavith's mind within his. /You're a real piece of shit. You told me this was to save them. You told me you wanted to help them. You had me almost believing you. But now I know, you're no better than a snake. You're a fucking snake!\ Jack railed with as much power as he could muster. /Do you hear that, Kavith? You're a fucking goa'uld!\

There was a strange moment then, where Jack felt his body go still. And then, within his mind, it was like he had broken through the wall. He felt something within Kavith shatter and suddenly the terrible force that had been holding him back was gone and there was just sadness.

And he was back. He was in control for his body again for the first time in days. He almost felt like he'd forgotten how to breathe. He felt the staff weapon drop from his fingers as he drew heavy breaths. And then his knees buckled and he fell.

/Friend,\ Kavith said.

Jack felt emotionally exhausted, but before anything else could happen, the little girl, seeing him drop his weapon, came at him and started pummeling him again.

“Hey, hey!” he said. “Cut it out! Hey!”

As he pulled her off him, he could see her red eyes and the fat tears sliding down her face.

* * *

The girl's mother was in the piles of bodies in the town square. At first, Jack had hoped that she would be one of the ones stunned by the zat explosion Kavith had rigged up, but she wasn't so lucky. She had a staff weapon blast to the chest.

Once they had identified her mother, the girl, whose name was Sanja, wouldn't let go of Jack and Jack definitely didn't have it in his heart to force her to. She literally clung to his leg like a toddler. So she was there as he helped the townspeople finish extinguishing fires and helped reestablish order. She was there as he quietly ceded control to Kavith, who took the hand device and healed half a dozen people before giving Jack control back. And she followed him into the room at an inn someone sent them to, when Jack knew he looked dead on his feet.

The room at the inn was on the northern end of town, the part that had been mostly untouched by the massive, seemingly random destruction the Jaffa had brought. It was a large room with a huge sleeping pallet and tapestries hung on the walls everywhere. Sanja had quietly let go of his leg and gone to sleep on the mattress.

/So,\ Jack sent.

They had been oddly quiet with each other for the rest of the day. Jack felt almost uncomfortable in his own skin after three days departed from it. Kavith was overwhelmingly sad and guilty.

/You saved my life.\

Jack extinguished the lamps then laid down on the mattress next to the little girl. /How do you figure that?\

/If I had harmed her, my life would be forfeit. It's already forfeit because of what I've done to you.\

Jack pondered that in the darkness.

/Let me save your life.\ Kavith's inner voice was almost a whisper. He had asked this many times. Just three days ago, Jack had been resolved to die. For the first time, he wasn't sure. /I need you.\

Jack felt himself snort slightly. /You do. You're a terrible solider.\ Jack had been surprised at Kavith. He could track. He could fight. He had good ideas about strategy. He had the strength that came from being a symbiote. But he had no control of his emotions whatsoever.

/You can see why Garshaw has always hated me so much.\

/What about the kid?\ Jack asked, thinking of how she had clung to him.

He was hit with a barrage of memories. Charlie, at age five, begging him not to leave on a deployment. Matti, as a toddler, needing to be held at night. Leelee, at twelve, crying on his shoulder. Yari, asking for advice about careers.

“Huh,” Jack said. There was something strangely unburdening about having this variety of parenting memories run through his head.

/So you want to keep her?\ Jack was surprised that Kavith felt such a fast kinship to the girl. He hadn't thought about taking care of her. They had to go kill Jaffa and figure out why they'd come to Talshion. They didn't have time for her.

/She needs us,\ Kavith said. /She's alone.\

Jack hadn't gotten much out of Sanja, just that her father was already dead. She had an uncle in the city who worked at the baths. They would need to go see him, he supposed.

Jack thought fleetingly of Daniel, abandoned by death at roughly the same age, something he rarely talked about but that Jack knew had deeply scarred him. 

And then, the reality of something even bigger began to sink in. They had a task to kill the Jaffa together. They would have to go see Sanja's uncle. They did. 

They. 

They were in it together.

A strange wave of love swept through him, at least as strong as the anger from earlier, just as blanketing and overwhelming.

/Cut it out,\ Jack sent.

But there could be no hiding from the presence in his mind that he was committed now. And that while he tried to send a gruff tone, he felt affection in return as well. And felt comforted by Kavith's love. And by his ability to break through the incredible strength of Kavith's mind.

Jack looked over at Sanja, basically passed out next to him. He sighed. She had done the impossible. She had brought them together.

* * *

Sanja woke screaming in nightmare. She was kicking and crying out in the bed near where Jack had been resting. He had slept more than he had in days, for at least several hours. He needed so little sleep now, but they had gone without then used the hand device and fought a battle. He woke up disoriented and weary, still unsure about this new situation.

/Here,\ Kavith sent.

Jack shook her awake and wasn't too surprised that when she opened her eyes, she stopped crying and grabbed hold of him, holding him with an iron grip.

“Let's get some food in you,” he suggested when it was clear she wasn't going to say anything.

She didn't talk much as he found them food. She did literally hang off him and he let her, slinging her on his back and letting her grip with her arms and legs piggyback style. She didn't weigh much. Kavith had memories of Matti riding this way.

As they ate warm breakfast porridge and fruit and made a sullen, mostly silent Sanja eat as well, they thought.

There were at least about twenty more Jaffa out there. They were looking for something, some sort of a box. Something they'd called the Padreescatala.

/Sounds Italian,\ Jack said.

/What's that?\

Of course Kavith had no Earth references to draw from. Jack's grandmother had been Italian. He'd been to Italy as well, years before. /A place. A language on Earth.\

/Do you think…?\

/It's a coincidence,\ Jack said. Daniel would have known. Or would have sparked something from that.

They knew which direction the Jaffa had gone, more or less. They could pick up the trail again and keep tracking, but it had been hard living. Jack glanced at Sanja, stirring her porridge and dumping piles of syrup crystals on it.

/We'll bring her,\ Kavith said.

Jack sighed. He could feel already that Kavith had some unconventional ideas about childcare.


	6. Jaffa Hunting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and company hunt down some Jaffa.

The rain fell on them as they hiked along a remote mountain path. There was a broad road for the big treaded movers and the animals to walk, but Kavith had taken them this way, up above on the hill, where they could spy anything unusual. 

Sanja didn't seem to mind much about the rain. Instead she complained about other things. She was out of sorts with the food and wanted more sweets. She didn't want to wash her hands despite the grime under her fingernails. She didn't want to talk when Kavith tried to ask her about her family.

/Leave her alone,\ Jack said, after Kavith tried to get Sanja to talk before she went to sleep, slung over Jack's back like another parcel he had to carry.

Kavith was worried she wasn't talking about her grief. Jack was more worried she was going to catch a cold after getting rained on in her sleep all night.

/I do not wish to pause. We need to catch up with the Jaffa. If she gets sick, we will use the hand device to heal her,\ Kavith insisted.

/That's terrible logic,\ Jack said. Kavith considered illness an inconvenience that was easily taken care of, which made sense in some ways, but Jack couldn't shake the idea that the flu could be as dangerous as a bullet wound. Still, he couldn't fight the desire to find the Jaffa and he knew they were getting close.

In her sleep, Sanja began to cry quietly. Jack could feel her breathing, still heavy and stuck deep in dreams. It had been disturbing, the things she had seen. But she had not wanted to stay behind. And against his better judgment, Jack had allowed Kavith to bring her.

Jack debated stopping. He could carry a great deal now, but he was getting tired. And if Sanja was crying again, he could put up a tarp and let her sleep. The rain had slackened off, but it was still miserable out. He felt Kavith's resistance. That's when he spotted a flicker of light up ahead.

It took another hour of walking, but Jack's new keen eyesight hadn't steered him wrong. He had spotted a fire where the Jaffa were encamped for the night. They weren't even hiding their location very well and while they had a lookout, they clearly weren't expecting trouble. There were eight of them, all around the fire.

Sanja woke up as Jack put her down on the ground and wrapped a blanket around her. “Stay here,” he ordered quietly when he went to check the camp.

“Don't go,” she whined, just waking up.

“I have to, midget,” Jack said. “Just wait here. We're going to take care of the bad guys.”

She perked up. “I wanna,” she hissed.

/Don't get any ideas,\ Jack told Kavith. “You're staying here,” he said and watched as Sanja planted herself on the wet ground. “Here.” He handed her a little wrapped honey sweet, the last one in the pack and she took it. He was confident she'd stay now. He knew she was tired too. The rain had stopped, but everything was still damp. Now that she had the blanket and a candy, she might even fall asleep again.

He had been right about the lack of sentries or other protections. Several of the Jaffa were in kel'no'reem, which would probably make things easier. However, the others were behaving oddly. Jack and Kavith both knew the Jaffa. When they were serious, they were determined and focused, they could be deeply religious and ritualistic about their lives, they were bloodthirsty and liked to argue. These Jaffa were sitting still, looking at each other, not speaking. They had their eyes open, so they weren't in kel'no'reem. But they weren't interacting either. Jack felt spooked by them, and he felt Kavith's agreement that something seemed off.

The fight back in the town had happened so quickly. The Jaffa had been asking over and over for that box. But that hadn't seemed odd. They'd been sent on a mission. They were fulfilling it. But now Jack wondered if something hadn't been a little eerie about them.

/Sentries would have made it easier,\ Jack complained. /Take them out one by one.\

/We have the staff weapon,\ Kavith said. /And the advantage of surprise.\

/They have staff weapons too, plus better numbers. I wish we had a P-90. Better range than this thing.\

/We need one alive,\ Kavith said and Jack could feel the thirst for revenge push through him. He meant to kill them all fast when they got started. /I want to know their plans.\

As Jack and his symbiote crouched in the darkness, debating, he heard the rustling of wet leaves and branches. The Jaffa heard it too. The ones not in kel'no'reem stopped their eerie stares came to life a little bit.

/Shit,\ Jack conveyed, suspecting what was on the other side of the small clearing, as he let Kavith take control.

They both wished they could pull the same trick as back in the town square with the modified zat. Maybe one of these Jaffa had a zat they could take after. In the meantime, they hadn't had a chance to make a plan.

Kavith went for the Jaffa not in kel'no'reem first, firing the staff weapon and killing three of them before they managed to turn on him, rushing toward him and away from the other noise.

All of them were up now, which meant five Jaffa to fight. Kavith dodged a staff weapon blast and ducked behind a tree, firing at the Jaffa and hitting one, though he wasn't sure if it was a deadly hit. The tree he was behind smoldered when a blast landed behind where he stood. Kavith turned and fired again, this time hitting his target.

 _“Kneel before your god,”_ Kavith intoned before firing again.

/Does that ever work?\ Jack asked.

However, to both of their surprise, the Jaffa paused their shooting.

“Who goes there?” a burly blond haired Jaffa asked.

 _“One who will be displeased if you continue attacking me in this manner. I was sent by Kali to change the mission,”_ Kavith said. They had Kali's mark. It seemed like a safe try. Most of the System Lords had minor goa'uld serving them. While they were often kept away from the Jaffa to keep them out of power, it could work. They had stopped firing.

“Kali has sent you?” the Jaffa asked. He sounded almost comically befuddled. The Jaffa were brutes sometimes, but they weren't usually outright stupid.

_“We have a new mission for you.”_

“The Padreescatala is our mission. Find the Padreescatala to give to the mistress.”

Kavith walked out from behind the smoldering tree, still holding the staff weapon out. They were all there. He and Jack guessed they might be able to take out two or three before the others got him. It wasn't enough.

_“I have already retrieved it from the town where you missed it. Now you are to return to the gate.”_

In the dim light from the fire, the Jaffa all looked confused. Kavith was about to start in on some more persuasion but the rustling sound returned and two of the Jaffa turned, walking back toward the fire, staff weapons raised.

It was exactly what they had feared. Sanja burst into the clearing, her knife out and ready. She hurled herself onto one of the Jaffa much the way she had done to Jack back in the town. But this time she drove the knife home quickly and efficiently, right into the Jaffa's middle.

Everything happened at once. The Jaffa grunted while another one went to pull Sanja off him. Kavith fired the staff weapon, hitting one of the Jaffa who had remained to guard him, then he dropped down, narrowly missing as a blast went toward him.

In his head, Jack ticked them off. Four down, four to go. Kavith fired again from the ground, and another went down. Three to go.

The last one aimed directly at them and the blast hit him in the side as he tried to roll away. The pain was searing, but all he could think was that he still had to get to Sanja. Jack was practically screaming inside, filled with guilt and the need for action. He had to get to her.

The Jaffa stepped toward him, almost awkwardly, Kavith thought. There was something odd about these Jaffa, something that, when he wasn't bleeding, he'd probably want to figure out. He could see that the one Sanja had sunk her knife into was sitting by the fire next to the bodies. The other one had her in his hands. The knife was gone.

/Shit. Shit. Shit.\ Jack was repeating it on a loop as he fought to get up. He was fighting so hard, Kavith receded, giving him control.

No Jaffa should have had reactions that slow, but this one did. Jack stood and fired again, and then again, surprising the Jaffa holding Sanja. The girl fell next to the fire with a thud and Jack fired a final time at the Jaffa on the ground bleeding.

“Sanja,” he managed to say, but it was the last thing he knew before he passed out.

* * *

When Jack woke up, he knew he'd been out for a long time. He was hurting and hungry and his face was strangely wet.

/Almost two days,\ Kavith sent. /My perceptions are limited with you unconscious, but Sanja has been here. She keeps trying to give us water.\

/Um, good for her?\ Jack struggled to sit up.

“You're alive!” Sanja threw herself on top of him. “I thought you were gone like everyone else.” And then she burst into tears.

It was the first tears he'd seen her cry since that day in the town square. She'd been such a sullen, stoic child during the journey. As Jack looked around and saw that they were surrounded by dead Jaffa on all sides, the scene took on an even more grim look.

“We've got to get you out of here,” Jack croaked.

Despite Jack's desire to leave quickly, it took them nearly an hour to pack up and move out, an hour during which Sanja babbled nonstop.

“And then that one there, the ugly one with the scar on his cheek, he tried to sit up, and there was blood everywhere so I used my knife on him too and he knocked me down so I grabbed that stick, which is really super heavy like and shot it and the lightning hit him in the head and I cheered except you were still sleeping and I thought maybe you'd never get up so I didn't want to cheer too much. I tried to give you water because my mother always said people need water. Do you think she's been reborn yet? And if she's a baby could we go find her and give her water? But babies need milk. Where would we get milk? And could we keep her if we found her? Could she be my little sister? Would she remember me? What's it like to be a Tok'ra? Are there other Tok'ras? If you take care of me will I be a Tok'ra one day?”

The unending talking went on and on.

/Are you rethinking keeping her?\ Jack asked as they managed to get away from the site of the carnage.

/No, friend,\ Kavith said. Jack could feel his amusement at Sanja. While Jack was beyond disturbed by how cavalierly Sanja had taken to violence and death, Kavith seemed satisfied. /It's a violent world out there. She will be a great warrior when she grows up. Perhaps she will be the sort of Tok'ra Garshaw would like to command.\

Jack felt a sort of horror at thinking about Sanja joining the Tok'ra.

/Is it so bad?\ Kavith asked, obviously sensing Jack's feelings.

/She can do whatever she likes in life.\ Jack protested.

/Yes. None of my children have chosen to become a host, you know.\

/Yeah. Okay.\ Jack couldn't explain why it was such a horror, just that he didn't like the idea. Kavith didn't seem bothered by his shock at the suggestion though.

/Go slow, friend. You were injured gravely.\

Jack and Sanja wandered back toward her town of Lorash. It was slow going. This time he couldn't carry her and they were low on provisions. Sanja had eaten nearly everything while he was out.

He taught her I Spy, but mostly she kept talking. It wasn't until the fourth day of the trip, as Jack roasted three little birds he'd taken down over a fire that Sanja, babbling away again, mentioned the padreescatala.

“Why do you think they want that old box, anyway?” she wanted to know.

“What old box?”

“The padreescally thing. Grandaadi always said it came from the tinkering man.”

“What?” Jack looked up from the fire sharply. “You know what it is?”

Sanja looked annoyed. “Sure. It's in my house. Maami said it would be my job to look after it one day but that it was a funny job because it wasn't the sort of job where you did anything. She said it doesn't do anything, just that the tinker man asked us to keep it.”

“Midget,” Jack said, frustrated, “what else are you forgetting to tell me?”


	7. The Baths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack visits Sanja's brother, has an unsatisfying bath, and thinks about sexuality.

The city had more than a dozen bathhouses, but the biggest one rivaled the ancient baths Jack remembered from a weekend pass meeting Sara in Rome.

/Tell me about these Romans and their baths,\ Kavith said. Jack felt the pique of interest.

/I barely remember it,\ Jack replied, but with an inward sense of resignation, he added, /Pull up the memories yourself.\

The memories lit through him then. He was finally starting to get used to this the more Kavith did it. The weekend pass, the train, Sara on the Spanish steps, sex in the seedy motel room, Sara wanting to walk through the Forum and the baths. God, he'd been so young then. And things with Sara had been so intense and sweet when they'd had those meetings. The memories had such a crisp quality when Kavith dug through them.

/Most interesting,\ Kavith said.

/Glad you liked it.\

/I would love to know more. Your planet has had so many civilizations rise and fall. No wonder your Daniel is so fascinated by them all and by the goa'uld's connections with all of them.\

/He's not my Daniel.\

/But you would like him to be,\ Kavith said.

Jack didn't reply. He was starting to get used to the things Kavith had changed in him. Tastes, smells, sounds. All his senses were more alert and wanted different things. Some things were the same. He could hum a bit of opera and enjoy it. He liked the taste of salty snacks. He liked the smell of the forest. But other things were so different. He wasn't sure how to deal with this particular difference, especially about Daniel. And he knew Kavith sensed his resentment at having the subject brought up, not to mention his ambivalence and his embarrassment.

Kavith was trying hard to stay out of Jack's way about his newfound feelings for men, but he wanted to understand it and several times had dug through for memories of Jack's life to help him understand Jack's vague horror at finding his best friend suddenly an object of lust. His father telling him to stop hugging that damned Sullivan kid because people would start to get ideas. Kids calling a boy queer in his sixth grade class. A lieutenant beaten to the edge of his life, the word fag scrawling in marker on his trunk when Jack was new to the Air Force. A team member who'd made a pass at him while they were stuck in a hole on a black ops mission together for weeks and Jack himself had nearly broken the guy's nose.

Having memories like that replayed through his mind only made Jack more conflicted, more confused, so Kavith tried to stop, but it didn't help him understand, especially when Jack wouldn't talk about it.

Jack mostly wanted to change the subject. He was feeling settled, for the most part. The Jaffa were gone, they had the town of Lorash on the road to recovery, and he was back in the city. Even if he didn't feel a connection with the city, he strangely enjoyed Kavith's connection with it.

Most of Kavith's free time had been spent with the box Sanja had gotten for him. It was a strange thing that he couldn't make heads or tails of. From Jack's perspective, he just spent hours staring at the thing after Sanja went to sleep.

Today was mostly about Sanja. Jack was anxious. He didn't want to admit how much she had grown on him. How much he was determined to watch out for her. But now that they were back in the city and all the immediate fires were put out, he knew he needed to settle things and see if her brother wanted to take care of her.

Kavith sensed his unease. /You should think about the baths. I've been here many times over the years.\

They were walking up the path to the baths, a building with imposingly large scalloped arches. Jack felt like he was about to go bathe and take meetings in the Taj Mahal.

/The Taj...\

/Aht! I've never been there anyway.\

/Alas. Think of the baths.\

Jack was getting better at this process as well. Wonder and pull up the memory himself. He didn't need Kavith to tell him. He could just reach in and find it, a bit like pulling his own memories. Like when he remembered his own memories, these didn't have the crisp, unreal quality that Kavith seemed to give his. But they always felt as if they were happening to him. Jack knew that Kavith was with different hosts in the memories, but he always felt as though it were his body that was there.

A flurry of imagery hit him. Watching a ruler with delusions of grandeur order the building of the baths. Going for a long soak inside the steamy pools. Talking about poetry and strategy with one of the planet's greatest writers of all time. Playing word games with a lover as they dipped their feet into the cooling pools in summer.

He paid the bathhouse fees and asked about Sanja's brother that he needed to find.

“Oh, Ramsab is popular,” the woman working the front gate said. “He won't be in for another tenth or longer. But then ask the boys in the back. They'll know.”

Jack felt Kavith realize something.

/Care to share.\

/Just that I know what Sanja's brother does at the baths. No wonder she had no idea. He's a prostitute.\

/Oh. Great. I guess he's not like to be a fit parent then.\ Jack had wondered, but Kavith had said something about bathhouse engineers and cleaners and bodyworkers so he'd tried not to go there.

/Don't judge. It's a respected career in the baths. If he's any good, he'll have saved up quite a fortune and obviously without a wife or children to support, it can go a long way.\

Jack stayed silent and tried not to judge.

The interior of the bathhouse was a marvel. Blue vaulted ceilings reaching so high up the mind boggled. Arches supporting the towering ceilings. Intricate tilework around every bath edge, only chipped in a few places. The smell was warm and inviting.

/Friend, if you can not relax, give me control. I dream about these baths. We will take the full experience while we wait.\

/No,\ Jack said, /I keep control.\

Kavith waited as patiently as possible, though Jack could feel his annoyance that it took Jack so long to disrobe, placing his clothes into one of the boxes along the men's wall. He felt like he was in some ancient locker room. On the other side were the women's spaces, not blocked by anything but a reasonable distance.

In a locker room, especially one where you didn't know anyone, you kept your eyes on your own space and got your business done. But here, everyone was leisurely looking. No one averted their eyes. And Jack, who knew he didn't look like the Talshonians, felt like he stood out, which he didn't like. He had never felt embarrassed by his body. Especially now, when Kavith had wrought so many changes, fading away old scars and strengthening muscle that had started to go slack, it seemed silly to feel this self-conscious. But he felt so watched.

/Relax.\

/Easy for you to say.\

Jack dipped a toe in the water and felt the warmth rise through him.

/The man with the yellow scarf. Tell him you'd like a standard bath service.\

/And will I regret that?\

/No way, friend. He'll wash us, oil us, shave us. It's divinely relaxing.\

Jack grumbled, but he resisted telling Kavith he was perfectly capable of bathing himself and approached the man the symbiote had suggested.

He was a young man, with a thick, strong build, naked like everyone else, but wearing a sort of long golden yellow scarf that reminded Jack of a priest's vestments. He had short curly hair and an open smile that turned into a grin when Jack made his request.

“Of course. I am Dev. May I know your name?” Dev bobbed his head in a funny Talshion gesture of encouragement that Jack had gotten used to over the last month.

“Jack.”

“Come with me, Jack.”

Dev led them both into the shallow end of the warm pool, where the water was steamiest. He carried a sort of box with a long handle filled with bottles and little ceramic pots. As Jack sank into the water, Dev did too, but the box floated beside him. The space wasn't too crowded, but it was far from empty. Men lounged in the water in groups, chatting. Several men were being washed by attendants like Dev in yellow scarves. Other men read wooden books at the side of the pools, their feet dangling into the water.

The sides of the pool formed benches and Jack found himself at the center of Dev's attentions. The attendant lathered his back, then his hair, then his chest, always moving with hands that were clearly professional. Jack closed his eyes. The warmth of the water was good at least.

He scanned the space again. Two men just across from them were silently stroking each other's chests. One man was a little taller, the other shorter but maybe slightly older, though they were both perhaps only a little younger than Jack and both well built. The taller one playfully flicked the shorter man's nipples, pinching them as they came to clear peaks. The shorter man leaned his head back. Jack couldn't hear what he said, but he could see his hand stroke the taller man's cheek. Jack closed his eyes again and tried to forget the barrage of things happening around him.

/It's okay to watch,\ Kavith said. /They wouldn't be public if they minded. Everyone watches everyone in the baths. And they'll leave for a private room if it starts to escalate.\

Jack didn't respond. He felt the attendant's fingers run through his scalp with the shampoo, practically washing every strand of hair. He could sense why Kavith liked this so much. By the time Dev lifted one of his feet, Jack's head was back on the side of the pool, resting, and he knew that when this whole ordeal was over, he'd probably be cleaner than he'd ever been in his life.

/But you don't like it,\ Kavith said, disappointment ringing through Jack's mind.

Jack tried to explain. /I always hate when I have to go to PT for anything. I don't like my body being the center of attention like that.\

/You're not injured.\

/I know. I don't like people to touch me.\

Kavith's inward voice practically laughed. /Friend, you like touch more than any host I've ever had.\

/But not this kind of touch. Professional, impersonal touch.\

/I see.\

Jack stayed with it, but when Dev stood him up to be oiled and massaged, he gave up and ceded control of their shared body to Kavith.

After that, Kavith relaxed a great deal more. Dev took him to the long corridors that led from the main pools to the cooling pools. There were lots of little spaces curtained off. He slowly shaved his stubble with a straight razor and trimmed stray bits of his hair. Then, on one of the pallets, Kavith let Dev rub and massage every inch of him. None of his muscles were weak or injured or strained. Kavith could fix those things if he needed to. Kavith just wanted the skilled touch of the massage.

As Dev moved up his legs, massaging along the muscle lines, Kavith flipped over on his back, shoving one of the heavy, sand-filled pillows behind his neck and watching. Dev had defined muscles from his work. His skin was a smooth brown and he was sitting on his heels working Jack's calves.

Dev chuckled slightly. “I thought you were never going to relax.”

“Mm,” Kavith said, borrowing Jack's voice.

“Do you want my hands?” Dev asked.

“Mm,” Kavith said again. /Jack?\

Jack could feel Kavith's interest. It was different from feeling his own arousal. It was removed somehow. And he was interested in a way as well.

“Or my mouth,” Dev said, his hand running up the inside of their thigh.

/No,\ Jack said, plain and simple.

“Thank you, no,” Kavith said, reaching down and stopping Dev's hand before it moved any more.

“A pity,” Dev said.

Kavith sat up and placed a hand on Dev's chest. Dev smiled a wide smile that showed his teeth. Kavith leaned forward and captured his mouth in a fast, wet, open mouthed kiss. Then he flipped onto his front again.

“Should I scrape?” Dev asked.

“Go ahead.”

/That sounds ominous,\ Jack observed.

/I assure you it feels good to have the oils and skin scraped away.\ But Jack could feel a certain hesitance in Kavith's inner voice.

By the time Dev had finished, been paid, and been asked to send Sanja's brother to him in the cooling pools, the disappointment in Kavith was powerful.

/You good?\ Jack asked. /Didn't mean to ruin your fun. Just wasn't ready for that.\

/It's not that,\ Kavith said. /I fear you have ruined the baths for me, Jack. That was not the experience I dream of.\

Jack laughed aloud as he sank into the cooling pool. It made him shiver slightly, though the water was actually a comfortable temperature, washing away the last of his one and likely only full service trip to the baths. He tried not to be smug, but it was nice to find that the changes in the blending really weren't all one way.

* * *

By the time Sanja's brother Ramsab arrived in the cooling room, Jack had donned one of the light robes from the hangers and sat on one of the long benches where books were stacked.

Ramsab was young and, Jack had no compunctions about admitting, strikingly handsome. His dark brown hair was slightly long, brushed to one side, his features were strong but delicate, his eyes large and almost hazel, in contrast to the brown eyes of nearly all the Talshonians. They made a nice contrast to his pale brown skin.

“I heard about what happened in Lorash, but I didn't think… I was going to go home in a few days and check on Mem and Sanja, but I didn't think...”

He was obviously shocked. He kept looking around the tiled room and seeming surprised that he was there.

“I'm sorry,” Jack said.

“Why? It doesn't make any sense. The Tok'ra hid us from all the old monsters with their fire sticks. It's like a story book. It doesn't happen.”

“I assure you, they're still out there.” Ramsab's view was hardly unusual. Kavith was proud of having relegated the goa'uld to myth on the planet. Jack worried he'd done too good a job making them into cartoon villains in case it ever got worse, as it now looked like it might.

“Curses, I just realized, what will happen to Sanja?” Ramsab looked stricken. “Oh, that's why you're here. I can't… I mean, I have money… Oh, I don't want her to go to an orphan house… She's already a mess. She'd probably end up in one of the hill gangs if someone doesn't… Oh no.”

Well, that was all the answer Jack needed. “We'd like to take care of her. She did something rather unexpected and we both owe her a debt.”

“We?”

Jack sighed and dropped his head, letting go of control. _“Jack and myself,”_ Kavith said. _“I am Kavith.”_

“The Kavith? Is every legend true?”

_“Not all of them. But this one.”_

“Yes. Yes, of course. I would be honored. She would be honored. And I have money to help with her schooling if it's needed. It was supposed to go to her regardless.”

Jack resumed control. “Maybe you could help me with her sometimes. I might need to leave her here a few times while I clean up this mess.”

“Of course.” Ramsab brightened. “I just bought a house in the Market Quarter. You should buy the house across the way. It's for sale. The owner just died. I know the broker. I can get you a deal.”

/Real estate?\ For some reason, Jack balked at the idea.

/You want to raise a child here but you don't want to buy a house? I'm afraid he's got the right idea, friend.\

“Yeah, okay. I guess I need somewhere to settle down. We've just been staying at an inn over near the city gates.”

“No, no, this will be so much better. I must do my duty for you and Sanja, honored relative. You are family now.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Inside, Jack felt a small surge of panic, clamped down by a wave of reassurance from Kavith. /It is good to have family, friend. This is something my people never seem to understand. Quiet lives are good and important too.\

/I find it hard to imagine a quiet life, especially if there isn't a lake with fish in it here.\

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More coming, to be continued. I promise Daniel will show back up in the next section. And romance. And smut, I promise a little bit of eventual smut.


	8. SG-1 Goes Shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, it's Daniel! Remember Daniel?

“It's not that I don't like him,” Daniel scowled.

“Daniel,” Sam said reproachfully, casually. She wasn't looking at him. Her head was entirely underneath the ship they'd found. It was up on stilts in the hanger at Area 51 and the whole team was stuck there until the could make it work again. Or, until Sam could make it work.

“I do like him! On a personal level. He's perfectly nice to his wife and kids.”

“But...”

“But in the field you have no respect for him, Daniel Jackson,” Teal'c said.

“Hand me that wrench?” Sam asked.

Teal'c handed her one of the wrenches from the toolbox.

“He has no respect for me. Or for any of the people out there. Or for history.”

Sam slid out from under the ship with a sigh. “Look, Daniel, it's not that I disagree with you exactly. But Colonel Winstead isn't a bad guy. He needs more time to adjust.”

“His adjustment period's going to get us all killed.”

“I don't not believe that is his goal,” Teal'c said.

“Of course it's not his goal,” Daniel said.

“The problem, Daniel Jackson, is that Colonel Winstead is not Jack O'Neill.”

Sam let out a long breath and gave Teal'c a look, as if to say, obviously that was the problem, but it was pointless to bring it up.

“We should be looking for him,” Daniel said. “It's been six months.”

“Daniel, you know we'd love to but...”

“We would not know where to begin the search,” Teal'c finished.

“With the Tok'ra still on the run, we have nowhere to even start. That was the second major base of operations they've had destroyed in the last year. They thought they were going to be able to start over after Vorash but then it basically happened all over again from their perspective. They're laying low. The message my father sent said as much. It's likely we won't hear from them for months if not longer.” Sam looked apologetic.

“There's got to be something...” Daniel began, but Teal'c cut him off.

“There is nothing we can do, Daniel Jackson, except to continue the work O'Neill would have wanted.”

“Daniel, we really just need to find the missing Jaffa. And make sure that Eshu isn't aiming for Earth. And… honestly, I just need to fix this damn ship so we can fly it.” She slid back under the ship.

Daniel stalked off. He really didn't hate Tony Winstead. The man was fine as military types went. He knew they should all count their lucky stars that SG-1 hadn't been broken up and blown to the winds. After what had happened with Jack, it was a miracle that General Hammond had kept them all from being court-martialed, much less kept them as an intact team.

An intact team minus Jack that was.

He knew Sam and Teal'c were just as upset as he was. Sam hadn't actually communicated with her father in months and probably wouldn't be able to again for awhile. They were just better at toeing the military line than he'd ever be. It was always Jack who'd managed to drag him along when it was necessary and Jack who took his anger and met it when Daniel refused to budge.

Jack had always cared. That had made the difference, Daniel thought. Colonel Winstead was downright dispassionate about everything. And the crazier the situation they faced, the less he seemed to feel and the more he seemed to lock down and focus on the rules.

* * *

“Dr. Jackson, I want you to stick with me on this mission,” Colonel Winstead announced in the gateroom. “No repeats of what happened last week.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Daniel muttered.

Winstead's eyes flashed anger and Daniel knew the whole mission, which should have been an easy one, literally a trip to the intergalactic yard sale so Sam could go shopping, was bound to go south.

Lt. Hailey was along for the ride on this one, on loan from SG-12 because she had actually visited the intergalactic yard sale, a planet with a massive marketplace known as the Borch Festival. She was clearly torn between trying to ingratiate herself both to Sam, who she respected more than anyone else in the whole SGC, and Colonel Winstead, since he had the ability to give her a performance review for her mission with the team, and basically gushing about the whole thing.

At the gate, they had to show their weapons and register them. Teal'c's staff weapon and the P-90's had to be left in a sort of giant weapons locker room, but they kept the zats and the handguns. Then they had to pay the gate fee. They'd brought small bars of trinium for it. Once they'd been released, Jennifer Hailey broke into gushing mode.

“All the addresses we got from the Escusians have been fascinating. We've been operating under the impression that there were a lot more humans out there than any other sentient species, but there's so many more than we ever knew. And the technologies are so different. Bio-engineering. Major Carter, I have to take you to the red tent. Wait until you see it...”

“With me, Jackson,” Winstead reminded him. “Let the ladies go find their gear.”

The primary mission was for Sam to find parts for the ship they'd salvaged. She didn't think anything would be too expensive. Daniel was supposed to look for Ancient tech they might find worth the money. From the moment they found their way into the tents, it was hard not to be overwhelmed. The Borch Festival was like a flea market of random alien goods and artifacts. It wasn't just technology. Daniel could see that there were tents with food and spices, tents with medicines, tents with arts and other goods.

“This could take weeks to sort out,” he said.

“You have three hours,” Colonel Winstead said.

“Yeah, I'm aware of the mission timetable,” Daniel said. “I don't think I'll be able to make much headway in that tiny amount of time, and I think we can already see it's probably worth it to come back.”

“That trinium is expensive. And it's not up to you.”

“I didn't say it was,” Daniel said, exasperated. “Colonel, why can't… Arg, never mind. I see a sign up ahead.”

The sign, once Daniel spent a few minutes puzzling it out, was helpful. It looked like where he wanted to go was probably a good twenty minute walk down the main line, a wide paved path with tents set into either side. Winstead radioed Teal'c and they set off.

A few minutes into their walk, they passed a tent that made Daniel pause and look. “Slaves,” he murmured. “We should...”

“Stop right there, Dr. Jackson,” Colonel Winstead said, grabbing Daniel's arm roughly. “We are not here on a humanitarian mission. Keep your eyes on the road and keep going.”

“Are you…?” Daniel sputtered slightly. “Take your hands off me, Colonel. You don't even know what I was going to say or do.”

“I think I know you well enough to...”

“I was going to say we should make sure the missing rebel Jaffa aren't up on the auction block and haven't been. It seems unlikely given the lack of contact between the worlds on this end of the galaxy and the goa'uld territory, but it seems like a huge wasted opportunity not to at least check it out.”

“We have a specific mission, Dr. Jackson.”

Daniel raised his arm, which he had wrenched away from the Colonel, ready to say something else. It was so stupid. They needed to not waste their time. He could ask in the slave market about the Jaffa and have it done in five minutes. Then they could finish the long walk to the tent that might, maybe have some Ancient artifacts for him to explore. And if they were lucky they'd find them and the people here at the Borch Festival wouldn't know much about the Ancients. But it was all if, if, if. And they had so little time.

That was when a little girl with black hair and thick glasses ran straight up to them and tugged on Daniel's green BDU jacket. She grinned up at him. Her clothes were all brown and purple, thick woven cloth that looked well-worn. She had her hair in uneven pigtails. “Come with me.”

“What?” Daniel said. She had spoken in goa'uld and he wasn't sure what to think. It was surprising, but not necessarily unexpected. She didn't sound like she spoke as a native. Perhaps she thought it was their language. There were plenty of humans at the Festival, but they made up less than half the beings Daniel could see at any given time. Maybe she thought they were goa'uld?

“Go away,” Colonel Winstead said. “What does she want?”

“She asked me to go with her.”

“Probably to sell you something. Move along, little girl.”

The little girl bared her teeth at him then tugged on Daniel's jacket again. “You. Come with me. Daniel.”

“How do you know my name?” Daniel replied in the same language, shocked. Did she have some mindreading ability? Something else?

She looked frustrated. “Come with me,” she said again, tugging on his jacket and moving off in the opposite direction of the slave tent.

Daniel started to follow her, Colonel Winstead started to object and the girl practically hissed at him and said, “No! Daniel! No you!”

“She says just me,” Daniel explained.

“No way,” Winstead said. “It could easily be a trap.”

At that moment, seemingly out of nowhere, a handful of other kids appeared and rammed into the Colonel, sending him sprawling to the ground.

The girl, still holding Daniel's jacket, snickered and Daniel knew she'd arranged it. He had a choice to make and he knew it was probably stupid, but he dashed after her, in between the two large tents and then through a maze of smaller tents behind them, tents with closed flaps and shorter roofs. She dodged people and animals and various containers of wares until they came to a little tent on the outskirts of the city by the edge. Here there were tents with little wooden porches overlooking a dirty stream of water.

“Got him! Told you I could do it!” she announced. She had dropped the goa'uld.

“What is this?” Daniel asked, shaking his head in confusion, his hand reaching for his 9 mm at his waist just in case.

“I didn't actually doubt you, Sanja,” said a voice, stepping from the wooden platform attached to the tent and suddenly Daniel was face to face with Jack.

“Jack!”

“You're a complete idiot to run off with her. What if I'd wanted to kill you?”

“But you didn't!”

“But you didn't know that.”

“Jack!”

“Okay, okay,” Jack shrugged and Daniel grabbed him, pulling him into a tight embrace.


	9. A Minor Mutiny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SG-1 gets away with breaking the rules, you know, like they always do.

“Let me get this straight.” They were seated on thick mats on the wooden porch. The little girl, Sanja, had her legs dangled over the edge and was eating long strips of a chewy, dried fruit that looked like mango, and reading a thick book that Daniel was itching to look at simply because it was so alien looking. Sort of like a primitive graphic novel, printed on thin cloth pages with a sort of wood lathe to keep them straight, covered in a script he'd never seen and bound with complex metal ties. She kept vaguely wiping her hands on the pages and giggling at some unseen joke.

“Go on,” Jack said.

“You really agreed to this? You did. You. Jack.”

“Yes. Me Jack. You Daniel.”

“Don't joke. This is serious.”

“Okay fine. Me also Kavith.”

“Jack!”

“Oh how I've missed that,” he said, smiling at Daniel, his face so relaxed, relaxed in a way that was both completely Jack and completely not Jack. “Look, you either believe me – believe us – or you don't. I don't have any magic wand to convince you.”

“I think hearing from the other Tok'ra might help.”

“Ah. Yeah. That.”

“Ah. Yeah? That? What's that mean?”

“It means we haven't heard from them exactly. I'm pretty sure they think Kavith's dead.”

“What? We've heard from the Tok'ra… sort of.”

Jack's face shifted. His muscles relaxed, his head bobbed down, and rose back up. When it did, Jack spoke in the reverberating voice of his symbiote. _“What have you heard? Are they well and safe?”_

“I don't know much. Selmak passed a message to us from offworld. They pretty much just said they were okay and would be out of touch for awhile. I think they're laying low.”

_“That does not surprise me. The problem is they're laying low as new threats emerge. Eshu seems to be intent on getting the System Lords to attack Earth. And Kali is up to something, I just can't tell what. But she has more Jaffa than before. She's recruiting from the other System Lords' ranks. At least, I believe they were her Jaffa. There's something not right about any of it.”_

“Earth is a protected planet,” Daniel said. “They can't attack us.”

Kavith shrugged, a very Jack gesture. _“Maybe they can and maybe they can't.”_

“Besides, we haven't been hearing anything about Eshu. It's been Camulus that seems like he's a thorn in our side since Apophis died.”

_“I didn't say Eshu was going to attack the Tau'ri. I said he was egging everyone else on to do it.”_

Daniel paused, unsure of what to say.

Sanja leaped up, letting her book fall to the floor and coming in between Jack and Daniel. She knelt at Jack's knees. “Gimme a double coin.”

His head fell and Daniel heard Jack's voice again. “What for?”

“Hungry.” She shrugged.

“You don't need a double to get a snack.”

She shrugged again. “Gimme.”

“What happened to the glasses?” Jack asked, looking around.

“Don't like 'em.”

“You're supposed to wear them if you read that book.”

“I didn't wanna,” she whined.

“Maybe I'm going to teach you manners.”

“If you don't give me coin, I'll steal it. Or bring the other Tau'ri.”

Jack put on a look of exaggerated hurt as he handed her a coin from a pocket in the loose, white tunic he wore. “Get out of here then. Don't spend the extra on anything deadly.”

She grinned, the same wide, slightly mischievous grin she'd given Daniel earlier. Then she leaned forward on her knees and kissed his cheek before jumping up and running off.

“And that…?” Daniel looked after her, curious.

“What? That's Sanja.”

“And her story is…?”

“Her own.”

“Jack?”

“She needed someone,” Jack said. “I was there.” He shrugged. “I like kids.”

“Does Kavith like kids?” Daniel cocked his head thoughtfully. “The Tok'ra don't have children.”

“Oh, Kavith likes kids all right.” Then Jack chuckled a moment later.

“He's talking to you now, isn't he? No, you don't need to answer. It's just… it's hard to believe, Jack. I didn't think this would ever… I thought you'd die first.”

“Well, I nearly did. I was about to dial Earth and walk through without a GDO.”

Daniel grimaced. “Hell of a way to go.”

“Seemed like a painless option.”

“And what changed your mind?”

“We kind of ran afoul of Kali's Jaffa. Have I mentioned that she's looking for something? Or that she has a million surplus Jaffa who, honestly, are behaving a little weird?”

“Ah, Kavith might have said something a moment ago.”

“Right. Well, that happened. And then. Well.” Jack waved his arm about in front of his face.

“Well what? I have no idea what you're trying to say.”

“Just, you know. Life.”

Daniel watched him intently, looking for signs that it was really Jack, that Jack was really happy, that this was really his choice, even if it was a choice at a dead end street.

“But why haven't you rejoined the Tok'ra?” Daniel asked.

“Oh. Kavith doesn't seem to think he'd be very welcome. He thinks we're better off free agents.”

“What? Do the Tok'ra do that?”

Jack shrugged. “I never liked them much anyway.”

Daniel furrowed his brow. “You're not making any sense.”

From in his vest, Daniel's radio, set to silent, lit up again furiously. Every few minutes it did that again. He'd radioed when he first found Jack that he was safe and to give him an hour, but he knew his time was nearly up.

“You want to go back and face that jackass of a colonel I heard you arguing with?”

“Not especially.”

“Well, Kavith and I aren't keen to go see Garshaw either.”

Jack's head dipped and his came back up with Kavith's bearing. _“You could come on the run with us.”_

When Jack took control again, he was practically in a fit of laughter and Daniel wasn't sure what the joke was exactly.

“I should probably radio in before they call in the cavalry,” Daniel said reluctantly. “What's our next move?”

“You mean after you answer Kavith's invitation to leave Earth behind?” Jack looked amused, relaxed. Daniel furrowed his brow. He wasn't sure what to make of this Jack. He was Jack and yet he wasn't.

“No. That wasn't serious, I assume. I mean should I go rejoin them with you without you? Try to get Sam and Teal'c over here without that ass Winstead? If I go back without you, what do you want me to say about you?”

“You had a mission here, right? I think you should stay and finish the mission. Sort through the Ancient relics you wanted to see. Take a day or two.”

Daniel shook his head. “What is this, bizarroland? Winstead was pretty clear he'd be dragging my ass back through the gate at 0300 come hell or high water.”

“Doesn't make any sense to pay the gate fees over and over. What'd you use? Naquadah?”

“Trinium bars.”

“That stuff doesn't grow on trees and you know you'll be back.”

“So…?”

“Go ahead and bring them over. Let's see if we can talk some sense into Winstead.”

* * *

Daniel was amused to see that Sam was practically vibrating with joy when they walked up. She was ignoring Lt. Hailey prattling on. As they all greeted Jack (Teal'c with a nod and a grin, Winstead with his hand literally on the zat on his belt), Sam looked practically tongue tied.

“Sir, it's very good to know you're okay.”

“I'm pretty sure you don't have to call me sir anymore, Carter,” Jack said. “Somehow I doubt I'm coming out of this with my rank intact.”

Sam nodded and looked almost wistful. Daniel knew how she felt. This Jack would never be their CO again, never be SG-1's Jack, never be their Jack.

“O'Neill, I sense you are still blended with Kavith,” Teal'c said. “Are you now content with your situation or does Kavith still seek a new host?”

“Ah, resigned, I guess. Stuck without another option,” Jack said. His head dropped in that tale-tell way that meant control had changed over. It was so strange to see what was a well-known gesture between Selmak and Jacob or Freya and Anise applied to Jack. _“We are quite content, thank you, Teal'c,”_ Kavith said. _“You may have observed that Jack tends to downplay his own comfort and happiness whenever possible. But I assure you that we are both at peace with the blending.”_

Daniel noticed that when Kavith took control, Winstead's hand had gone from simply resting on his zat gun to gripping it. “For goodness sake, Colonel Winstead,” he said. “He's Tok'ra. You're not going to shoot him.”

“I've read the reports,” Winstead said. “We don't know for sure that he's Tok'ra.”

_“I will let the insult pass. But let me assure you that if I were a goa'uld, you would all be dead by now. There is a high bounty on your heads and killing you would be the best way I could think of for a minor goa'uld to ingratiate himself to any of the System Lords. No offense, of course.”_

“None taken,” Teal'c said, smiling.

Winstead looked like he had taken offense. Mostly he just looked like a man who had lost control of his team, which he probably had. “We need to leave,” he said. “We're due to check in at the gate at 0300 and we'll be late if we don't start back now.”

There was a pause among the group. Jennifer Hailey was the one to obliviously break the silence. “Sir, permission to stay. We could split up. There's just so much here that could be of use. It's standing orders to bring back technology that will be useful for the defense of Earth.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Jack said, resuming control of his body.

Winstead shook his head. “Permission denied, Lieutenant.” He looked at Jack and everyone, except maybe Jennifer Hailey, who was clearly formulating a counter argument to get to stay behind somehow and keep shopping for space junk, could see that he was calculating whether he thought he could apprehend the SGC's most famous AWOL.

The pause continued into uncomfortable territory so that even Hailey could sense they were at a standoff.

“I should probably end the suspense here and tell you there's no way I'm going back to Earth at the moment,” Jack finally said, casually.

Winstead looked almost relieved that he wouldn't have to bring an infamous possibly goa'ulded prisoner of unclear status back with him through the gate. But he at least pretended to be angry that Jack wasn't going to face justice. “I'll be reporting your whereabouts to General Hammond.”

“Good, you do that.”

“With me,” Winstead said, starting to walk toward the gate. Hailey followed, but no one else did, at least at first.

“Sir… um… Jack,” Sam said. “Where are the rest of the Tok'ra?”

“Haven't seen them, Carter. We've been a bit cut off.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly confused and disappointed. “Well, if you or Kavith have any insights on the marketplace here… And I'd love to hear what you're...”

“Major!” Winstead barked. At least he knew who to target. Teal'c wasn't likely to listen to him and neither was Daniel.

“You'd better,” Jack said, waving his hand toward Winstead vaguely.

“Yes, sir,” Sam said. She began to walk toward the colonel.

“Or,” Jack said.

“Or?” Sam hadn't gotten far.

“Hey, Colonel Winstead,” Jack called.

“I believe our conversation was finished,” Winstead said, turning around.

“Funny thing about beliefs,” Jack said. “Sometimes they're wrong. Like now. We're still talking.”

Winstead looked infuriated. Daniel knew that look well.

“Sir,” Sam said, though Daniel wasn't totally sure if she was addressing Jack or Winstead and she didn't follow it up with anything else.

“We aren't done here,” Daniel said.

“Indeed we are not,” Teal'c added. “I propose that Colonel Winstead and Lieutenant Hailey return to the SGC while the rest of us remain here.”

Everyone looked at Teal'c in surprise. Winstead sputtered. “No way is that happening.”

“I do not know how you could prevent us,” Teal'c said. “A good leader knows when to back down.”

“I'll make sure they're back in 36,” Jack said. “And since I'm feeling so nice, I'll even pay their gate fees.”

Winstead sputtered again. Jennifer Hailey looked disappointed that no one was forcing her to mutiny.

It shouldn't have worked, but they all knew Winstead had a weird thing about Teal'c. And somehow, ten minutes later, Colonel Winstead was trekking up the path past the tents and toward the gate, with Lieutenant Hailey following behind, looking back at them forlornly as the sun set over the Festival.


	10. A Midnight Stroll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel and Kavith (and Jack) take a midnight walk. Sexual tension abounds.

Everyone should have been settled for the night. Jack had set them up in a tent across the low river from the one he had with the porch. It was more rustic and more like a tent than Jack's canvas cabin. However, it suited the three of them perfectly well. Sam had clearly spent a good chunk of time worried about the repercussions of their actions earlier in the afternoon, but Daniel had seen the moment she'd put it aside. She had come back to the tent with a box filled with some sort of electrical wiring and had looked like it was Christmas morning.

He should have been happy. They'd ditched Winstead and found Jack and there would be a whole day of scouring over artifacts to come. But he was restless. It felt like the conversation with Jack was unfinished.

He finally stole out of the tent as quietly as possible and sat down on a rock at the edge of the creek. The sounds of the market were still going and there were lights, though in the distance. Parts of the market were clearly an all night affair, but they were in a quiet neighborhood.

After he'd sat there for a few minute, he noticed movement in the dark across from him.

_“Do not be alarmed,”_ Kavith said. Daniel started briefly but then squinted and could see Jack's outline on the little porch across the creek.

“Oh, hey,” Daniel said.

_“Can you see well enough to come across the one of the boards on the water, Dr. Jackson? We would appreciate your company if you cannot sleep.”_

“I think so,” Daniel said, finding his way to one of the makeshift bridges across the little waterway. The water seemed clean, but he was sure it must be absurdly polluted, and he stepped carefully. In a couple of minutes, he climbed onto the little board porch where he had sat with Jack earlier.

_“Thank you for joining us, Dr. Jackson,”_ Kavith said.

“Um, you really can call me Daniel.”

_“I did not wish to presume. Thank you.”_

“Where's Sanja?”

_“Sleeping. She has an extraordinary ability to sleep soundly no matter what goes on around her. She is a most interesting and active child. It has been many years since there was a child in my life.”_

“The Tok'ra don't have children.” He said it earlier, but to Jack. Daniel made himself comfortable on the short chair next to Jack, or rather, Kavith.

_“No. But I have often walked a different path from my Tok'ra brethren. Two of my previous hosts had children. And when I was host to Ilenia, we were like a mother to our lover's son for many years.”_

Daniel wasn't sure how to respond to these anecdotes from Jack. Picturing Jack as anyone's mother was a little jarring.

_“You are uncomfortable hearing me talk about my previous hosts?”_

“No,” Daniel said, hoping it wasn't a lie, trying to make it not a lie. “Um, I'm actually interested.” That was true. As difficult as it was to understand, he was intrigued. He had also started to wonder about Jack in Kavith's head, silent for their midnight conversation.

_“This is the time of day when Jack usually rests and I do any projects I'm working on.”_ It was like Kavith was reading his mind. _“However, I have done all I can in deciphering the piece of technology left behind by Kali's Jaffa. Your Major Carter has promised to help me consider it further tomorrow. I find now I'm restless and would like to go for a walk. Would you care to join me?”_

“Sure,” Daniel said.

They left the edge of the porch and Kavith led the way slowly but purposefully to the main road through the fair. Things were settled for the night, but there were patches of activity where people were gathered, sometimes around glowing images or artificial lights and a few times around campfires dotted up and down in between the massive tents.

“So, how does this work exactly?” Daniel asked.

_“What do you mean?”_

“Is Jack there now? Listening? Talking to you?”

_“He is here. Usually this is the time of day he rests. The Tok'ra need much less sleep than unblended humans, but the host tends to want a rest period. The mind can drift, not think about much, lose oneself to sensation and emotion and memory, a little like being in a dream state. However, at the moment, Jack is very alert. And, yes, talking to me. He is always… interested in your company, Daniel.”_

“Oh.”

They turned off the main road and went down a side road that was lit with bio-luminescent torches. There were small earthen dwellings along this road, alongside more permanent tents like the one where Kavith and Sanja were staying. The road wandered away from the market and along an empty field where something with broad leaves was being cultivated.

_“I am glad that fortune brought us back together to meet again, Daniel. Jack has missed his team and his home planet, but you most of all. I am not convinced, as he is, that he can never return, but I was not sure when or how he might see yourself, or Major Carter, or Teal'c again.”_

“I don't know if Jack can ever go back to Earth. He's not wrong. I feel guilty about how we framed you and him, but I think the way that I did it will probably make things impossible for you to go back. You see, I told them that it was nish'ta and I made sure to have some in my system. That was why I kissed Jack before he left. I wanted it to seem like… Well, you get the idea.”

_“But nish'ta is only effective one time. As I understand it, you had previously broken its effects.”_

“Right. But the guys at the NID don't know that. I mean, we didn't know it for sure. I just had to give General Hammond an out. But it means now that Jack looks guilty and so do you. You heard Winstead. They're half sure you're goa'uld.”

_“That is unfortunate.”_

“Yeah, you're telling me.”

_“It is also unfortunate that the kiss you gave Jack on the cheek was for show. We are disappointed to realize it.”_

“So… I'm not imagining any of this. You really… I mean, Jack really… God, this is so surreal. I think I…” Daniel sucked in a deep breath and started again. They had reached a quiet point in the road. The edges of the tents were in the distance. The torches gave off an eerie blue light and the sky above was dotted with stars and the reddish light of two moons. “I don't really think Jack is gay.”

They paused in the empty road. Daniel wasn't sure what was going to happen next. He wasn't sure if maybe he shouldn't have said anything. He didn't mean to press, but it was so shocking, so surprising. He had been thinking about Jack's hand on his arm, stroking, clearly something more than anything Jack had ever done, even in all the moments he had ruffled his hair or patted him on the back or given him a million other casual touches of the sort that men are allowed to share.

_“Jack has always found your company stimulating, even if sometimes infuriating. He loves you dearly.”_

It was a touching answer, but despite using this loaded word, love, it didn't tell Daniel anything. He would have said that Jack loved him, though he would have been surprised to hear Jack use the word. Jack was someone who was fiercely loyal to his friends. “You sidestepped the question,” Daniel said.

_“Among the Tok'ra, it's not a term that has any real meaning. We are all, sexually speaking, male, and have not had a queen among us since Egeria was lost. We do not sexually reproduce without a queen and do not experience sexual pleasure outside the host. Our gender changes with the host. Some of us, myself included, have a preference for the sex and gender of our hosts. But as you likely know, the expression of physical affection can cross all those boundaries. Many of the System Lords tend to embrace and promote what you might term heteronormative relationships as a matter of choice and also control of their human and Jaffa populations. But among the Tok'ra, we have no desire to label any relationship. We do not expect physical affection to be tied to anything but personality and compatibility. Sometimes the host's own preferences carry over through the blending. And sometimes the blending changes things.” ___

__Daniel listened with some interest to the unpacking of sex and gender among the Tok'ra. Part of him wanted to press Kavith on a million different questions. The anthropology of sex wasn't exactly his expertise, but he had found it fascinating to see the variations of what was out there on alien planets. It seemed like very little was taboo among the Tok'ra, which hardly surprised him._ _

__However, he was much more interested in getting an actual response from Jack or about Jack. It was strange to see Jack become Kavith. Kavith's posture, his speech patterns, his whole demeanor were radically different._ _

__Jack's head dropped briefly and then he resumed the walk along the dirt road past the field. “You wouldn't believe the things that this blending screws up in your head. Do you know most meat tastes nasty now? I can't eat it or I want to hurl. Fish is still okay. Candy is all too sweet.”_ _

__Daniel started walking again to catch up. “Really?”_ _

__“Yeah. I don't think I'll ever eat a steak again.”_ _

__“That's too bad. I know you loved steak.”_ _

__“I did.” Jack sounded regretful, but not really sad, as if it was just a new fact. “Stupid snake made me like vegetables too. Not normal ones either. Really bitter stuff. But now it tastes sort of good.”_ _

__“That's… interesting. Are we speaking in metaphors here?”_ _

__“What? No. I ate a plate full of these green stalks covered in a spicy sauce the other day and I thought, gosh, that's the best thing I've had in weeks. I'm pretty sure it would have all come back up if I'd tried it before.”_ _

__Daniel could hear an almost capitalization of “before” in Jack's speech. “So… it changes you.”_ _

__“Yeah.”_ _

__Daniel was pretty sure they were speaking in metaphor, even if not directly. He didn't even realize the moment when Kavith resumed control of Jack's body._ _

___“What Jack would like to say, but is anxious about expressing, is that he was deeply shocked when he realized that his feelings for you had become feelings of physical attraction. It was the first clear sign for both of us that the blending had begun to change him. I regret that I was unable to control it. I have always been weak in this way. I hold on to my hosts and to their lives most tenaciously. Many of my Tok'ra brothers do not approve, but I have never been able to stop myself. I have adored all my hosts. Jack was captivating to me from the very beginning when he lay in a coma in your SGC. He and I have many traits in common. The longer we waited for a rescue that did not present itself, the harder it became to stop this natural process._ _ _

___“Jack has been… disquieted by the way I have changed how he sees male bodies. To answer the question you asked earlier, he never had a sexual relationship with another man before our blending. Any small desire he might have had was greatly outweighed by social conditioning. It is one aspect of our blending with which he is still coming to terms. However, he is relatively sure you, Daniel, have had intercourse with other men.”_ _ _

__“Oh,” Daniel said. “Um. My own view of sexuality is probably closer to the Tok'ra's, I guess. Jack's not wrong, though working in a military institution, I don't exactly advertise any gay experience on my sexual resume. I assume Jack has explained about Earth's culture and homosexuality?”_ _

___“Jack has explained the best he can. I might enjoy speaking to you about these things. We share an interest in how cultures change and evolve and the importance of history.”_ _ _

__“You're an anthropologist,” Daniel said._ _

___“I have been, at times, among other things. The Tok'ra have little use for historians and anthropologists beyond recording the intricacies of the System Lords' relationships for the purposes of our resistance. Like yourself, I've been used for my other skills more often over the years. Jack calls me a code breaker. But if I let you change the subject, Jack will be most annoyed with me.”_ _ _

__“Oh,” Daniel chuckled. “Um, yes, the military. Since my wife died, I haven't dated much. It's hard in this line of work to form any sort of meaningful relationships. I don't know what Jack will think of this, but when I've wanted a more casual… um… encounter… I've had a few one night stands, mostly with men in the last couple of years. At least in our culture, it's not an uncommon sort of male relationship so it's just seemed, um… easier than any of the alternatives.” Like even considering falling in love._ _

__He looked over at Kavith and felt dismayed that there was no way to gauge Jack's reaction to this revelation, if it even was a revelation. They were routinely surveilled for security purposes. He hadn't done anything illegal like public exposure or paying for sex. And he was a civilian. Still, he wouldn't have been surprised if Jack knew._ _

__“I assume that's what Jack is curious about,” Daniel said. “And that I'm not involved with anyone now.” He held his breath a few beats after saying that last piece. It was a clear invitation. He didn't know what he was doing. Jack was attractive, but he'd never let himself go there through many years of friendship, just like he didn't let his mind go there in regards to Sam or Janet or any of the people he had to work closely with. He wasn't someone who pined away for people._ _

__But since Jack had left them through the gate, he had not been able to stop thinking about that one touch. And he had found that he ached for more. It had been years since sex had been tied to love. All his friendships were tied to work and the boundary lines there were unclear. He didn't have time or energy to look elsewhere for anything more than what he had, but Jack's very subtle, very chaste pass at him with Kavith on board had opened up something inside him that he had been purposefully starving, a desire for family and deeper connection._ _

__The path had rounded the field and curved again, headed back for the main road. Daniel was glad he had Jack with him because he wasn't sure he could find his way back to the tents in the dark._ _

___“Yes,”_ Kavith said after a few moments of walking in silence. _ _

__And then Kavith, with Jack's hand, reached out and took Daniel's, grasping it firmly and holding it as they walked, as if they were two teenagers on a date. Daniel shivered._ _

__When they reached the tents, Kavith released Daniel's hand and stroked the side of his face lightly then told him goodnight._ _


	11. The Tinker Man's Lab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone heads out to find Machello's lab, Sanja gets dropped off, Sam has doubts, Jack/Kavith and Daniel make goo-goo eyes over research notes.

When Daniel finally managed to make himself get up in the morning, he wandered across the creek to Jack's makeshift home where he found Sam engaged in trying to take apart a golden box the size of a shoebox. It was intricately engraved with almost baroque looking designs. Sam had the hinged lid open and the box on its side, looking at the bottom.

“It's beyond confusing,” she complained. “None of this makes any sense.”

Daniel rubbed his eyes, trying to wake up all the way.

_“I also found it to be nonsense. Yet the Jaffa with Kali's mark risked much to try and get it. And they implied that there were others as well, serving some purpose that I cannot discern. Someone left it in the care of Sanja's family for reasons I don't understand, someone who managed to find her planet, which was not an easy feat after all I have done to hide it.”_

Daniel peered over Sam's shoulder at the box. She turned it and he saw the designs move. “Huh,” he said.

 _“Do you have some insight, Daniel?”_ Kavith asked.

“Just… something about the design looks familiar. Sam, will you shut the lid and let me see it for a minute?”

She carefully shut the box and handed it to him. He turned it over in his hands and watched as the light hit the etched metal in such a way that part of the pattern stood out while part of it receded. As he shifted it, he could see different things. “Oh. Yes. That's clever.”

“What's clever? You're not even looking at the control mechanism,” Sam said.

“It's just… can't you see it?”

“See what?” Sam complained.

“Both of you,” Daniel said impatiently. You were both there. Look at the way this turns into a circle in the light...”

“Wait, is that...”

 _“I do not understand,”_ Kavith said.

“Machello!” Sam exclaimed. “It's his signature!”

 _“Who is...”_ Kavith started, then trailed off, cocking his head as if thinking. Sam shot Daniel a look that it didn't take a genius to decode. How strange it was to see Jack's body, inhabited by another, and Jack and the symbiote so in harmony.

“I feel like an idiot for not seeing it,” Jack spoke up. Then he smacked his head almost comically. “The tinker man. Machello was Sanja's tinker man. You'd think I could have seen it.”

“I don't know why it hit me so fast,” Daniel said.

“Because you're a damned genius,” Jack inserted.

“I think it's just because I knew I didn't have a hope of understanding those buttons or that wiring Sam was studying,” Daniel said.

“Either way,” Jack replied, grinning at his broadly.

Sam looked up at them then back at the box. “Well no wonder I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Everything Machello did was inexplicable. I still don't have a clue how those body swapping devices worked.”

While they were focused on the box, Kavith had apparently taken control again. _“Jack remembers a lab, but not what happened to the contents,”_ he said. _“Do either of you know where those things would be?”_

“Some of them were left there,” Sam replied. “There was some really large stuff, if I recall. And getting it all wasn't high on the priority list, not with what happened with the body swapping device and how we couldn't figure out how any of it worked. But I know they sent in another team and took out a bunch of stuff. It all went to Area 51.”

 _“I need to get to that lab,”_ Kavith announced.

* * *

As they packed up, Sam pulled Daniel aside. They'd had all day on the planet and Daniel had done a good starting survey of what was available in some of the tents with the older artifacts. There had been a few scraps of Ancient here and there, but nothing on the level of what they were hoping to find, and everything had been overpriced beyond anything Daniel had expected. He didn't think he was just terrible at bargaining. But it didn't mean anything good for getting any deals. The galaxy apparently knew Ancient tech was valuable.

Now the plan was to leave together. Circumvent orders and follow Jack to Machello's old lab. Teal'c looked blithe about it. Sam looked like she was going to panic. He was pretty sure that's what she wanted to talk about.

“I'm worried it's not Jack,” she said, without preamble.

That wasn't what Daniel had expected. “What do you mean?”

“Just… little things.” She shook her head and zipped up her pack. “He's just off. I'm worried we're being played.”

“I believe it's him.”

Sam paused, looking unsure. “Okay. But have you noticed… Daniel, I'm pretty sure he's been flirting with you.” She said it in scandalized tones.

“Um, yeah, I'm pretty sure too.”

“Oh.” Sam looked confused.

“We talked last night.”

“Oh.” She looked even more confused.

“Before he left, Jack made a pass at me,” Daniel confessed.

“What? And then we helped him leave?” Sam looked bewildered. “Daniel, doesn't that worry you? I don't… I mean I never saw… I mean… the colonel… Jack...”

“We talked about it, Sam,” Daniel said.

“But, Daniel...”

“Kavith said the blending changes things. Jack told me he can't eat the same foods anymore. Did you notice how he was with Sanja? I can't imagine Jack being that calm with a kid who is clearly looking to him to play parent, not with what happened to Charlie. He's different.” Daniel wanted to say he was Jack without all his trauma bearing down on him so hard. It was like Kavith was helping him bear all his loads.

“But are you…” Sam paused and pursed her lips, clearly trying to decide what to say.

“I think it's him. I think it's him after the blending. Think of some of the things that changed about your father after he blended with Selmak.”

“But that was different.”

“I'm not so sure. After talking to Kavith, I think it's possible your father's been keeping some of the changes quiet. But also, Kavith said that he always blends more closely with his hosts than many of the other Tok'ra. So maybe that's it.”

“I don't know, Daniel. This is… it's sort of big, don't you think? You're not gay either.”

Daniel sighed. “Not exactly.”

Sam's mouth pulled into a surprised o shape.

“Let's go to the lab and see what we find,” Daniel suggested. “I really think it's Jack. I really think he's Tok'ra. And think about it this way. If he was a goa'uld, what would be the long game here? He had us last night asleep in one place. He could have easily rounded us up and sold us off. Or just killed us.”

“I know,” she said.

“And what about Sanja? She's not a goa'uld. Why bring her along like this if he's goa'uld? It makes no sense.”

“She barely makes sense anyway,” Sam complained. “I don't understand it at all.”

“I don't really either,” Daniel said. “But something happened with her on the planet with those Jaffa. Maybe we'll get the story eventually.”

He picked up his pack and pushed the canvas door aside. “You coming?”

She shook her head. “I'm trusting you, Daniel.”

Outside the canvas tents, Jack stood at the edge of the creek with Teal'c, talking. He smiled at them and gestured at the makeshift board bridge. “Ladies first,” he said to Sam.

As they got to the other side of the creek, Jack scooped up Sanja from her position soaking her feet in the creek. “Hey!” she shouted, punching at his side.

“I can't believe I'm taking you through the gate with those muddy feet!” he said. “After I told you to stay out of the water for once.” He didn't sound angry at all. Daniel thought of all the times Jack had sounded peeved with him. He sounded annoyed, but in the way he sounded when he loved someone. Jack showed affection by being annoyed.

He also showed affection by being physical. He still had Sanja in a hold, her black braids swinging upside down, her fists banging him. But she was laughing. “My feet!” she shrieked.

Teal'c raised an eyebrow and the corners of his mouth went up in a smile. “Children can be most bothersome, can they not, O'Neill?” he said as the four of them, Sanja still in tow, headed along the path to the gate. The sun was just setting and trading in the market was winding down. People lined up buying food from pushcarts and little motorized trams that were winding along the streets, pausing for customers.

“This one is more bother than you'd believe,” Jack said. But he swung her right side up and set her on the path to walk.

“Gimme a bowl of that sweet stew!” she said as they passed a brightly colored pushcart.

“No,” Jack said. “You'll eat when we get where we're going.” Then he looked at her again. “Where are your glasses? This was half the reason we came to this planet, you know.”

She made faces and rocked her head at him.

Daniel thought he was going to break out in laughter. She reminded him of the kids on Abydos, who were always in everyone's business, and parented by everyone, their mischief valued in a strange cultural way that it had taken Daniel, raised to by his parents to excel and then by the foster care system to keep his head down, a long time to adjust to.

Jack negotiated with the gate minders and paid the fees while all of them reclaimed weapons from an elaborate system run by robotic arms. Daniel thought it looked like getting your dry cleaning but for alien weaponry.

“O'Neill, where are the guards going?” Teal'c asked as they approached the gate.

“I paid for a blind gate transit,” he said. “No one gets to see the address.”

“Oh,” Sam said. “I wouldn't have thought of that.”

“Wouldn't have been necessary for Earth,” Jack said, beginning to dial the DHD.

“Sir… Jack… that's not… that's not the address for Machello's world, at least not the one Daniel remembered.” Sam looked anxious, even borderline panicked.

“Just a side trip, Carter. We have to drop off the midget.”

Sam drew in a breath as the wormhole engaged. She looked at Daniel and Teal'c.

“O'Neill,” Teal'c said, “Samantha Carter is rightly concerned about following you to an unknown planet.”

“Trust me,” Jack said.

“Wait, I want to stay with you! Am I the midget? I'm not a midget!”

“Come on, Sanja,” Jack said, and he walked through the gate, clearly assuming they would all follow him.

Sanja did, quickly running after him through the wormhole.

“Daniel...” Sam said.

“I'm going,” Daniel said. “If you don't come, I get it.”

But on the other side of the gate, moments after he stepped through, Daniel saw Teal'c and Sam behind him, Teal'c with his staff weapon out and ready, Sam with her P-90 clutched in her hands.

They both visibly relaxed to see Sanja screaming at Jack, who was ignoring her and talking to a man sitting atop a tall vehicle on wide treads. Guards stood on either side of the gate, heavily armed with what looked like modified zats and some sort of long knives sheathed in flowing belts. They drew their weapons upon seeing Sam and Teal'c, but without even looking back, Jack raised a hand to wave them off, as if to say they were safe. However, the gesture didn't seem like Jack and they realized it was Kavith when they heard the reverberating voice coming from Jack.

 _“If you would take her to Nurse Tabinta at the hospital, she knows the situation and will watch over her,”_ Kavith instructed.

“Of course, esteemed one,” the man said. “I am honored to do this favor for you.” However, as he looked at Sanja, feet still muddy, practically spitting in anger at Kavith, he didn't look all that honored. He looked appalled.

Jack's head bobbed down in the gesture of control being changed. “Listen!” he bellowed at the little girl. “I'll come back.”

She stopped yelling and looked sullen. “I hate you. You're going to leave like my parents.”

Daniel was standing behind Jack watching this odd scene. “I get lost sometimes and Jack always comes back for me, even when he probably shouldn't. If he says he'll come back, he'll come back.”

She looked dubious. “If you don't, I'm telling everyone the old Tok'ra stories aren't true. That they're really evil demons.”

“You do that,” Jack said.

A few minutes later, he had talked privately with the guards, handed off some things and turned back to the DHD. “Okay, kids, who's with me this time?”

* * *

Machello's lab had been ransacked at least once since the last time SG-1 had been there. Large equipment that was left behind by the tau'ri had been claimed and parts of the building complex were a mess. Someone had left trash of some kind in one of the rooms, leading Daniel to speculate that it wasn't only treasure hunters who had come through, but also maybe just vagrants. The planet itself was apparently empty, but the gate was unguarded.

Even without anything to look at, there were things to read. Sam gathered the papers and Teal'c, Kavith, and Daniel all began sorting through them. Teal'c tried to run triage on things. Especially because early on, he found what was apparently nothing more than Machello's grocery list.

Sam, the only one who couldn't read goa'uld, had concern etched onto her face. And she was obviously watching the time. Her watch was set to the SGC and they were due back in just under five hours.

 _“See what you make of this one, Daniel,”_ Kavith said, passing Daniel a torn piece of paper. Machello's obsession with paper records was interesting. Daniel typically spent all his time translating computer screens or stone edifices. Paper wasn't popular out in the galaxy, but Daniel suspected that Machello developed his preference for it because of his paranoia about the goa'uld. He had already known this was true, but it shone through on everything the man wrote.

Daniel took the paper, but he couldn't figure it out at all. It was obviously some sort of code, but there was so little of the paper left to go on.

“It doesn't make any sense,” Daniel complained.

 _“I'm glad to see we agree,”_ Kavith said. He reached across and took the paper back, brushing his fingers against Daniel's as he did. For a moment, he dropped the paper and absently squeezed Daniel's hand before picking the paper back up and putting it in the pile they were calling “secret codes.”

“Kavith,” Teal'c said, interrupting. “This notebook seems to deal with the Jaffa.”

Kavith took the notebook and began looking through it. Peering across the table at it, Daniel said, “Wait, go back.”

As Kavith turned the pages back, he saw it too. It was a sketch of something that looked like the carved box they had.

 _“That is the box,”_ Kavith said. _“Can you read this, Daniel? Because I cannot.”_

“Just our luck, more code.”

* * *

The argument was probably inevitable. Daniel could see Sam losing her patience, her anxiety about being basically AWOL when the world wasn't about to end taking over.

As Kavith and Daniel started taking apart Machello's code, Jack inserting himself to bicker with Daniel occasionally, Sam, who had been urging them to return to the SGC, suddenly broke down and yelled at them.

“Stop playing footsie and make a decision! They're going to send a team after us back at the Borch Festival in the next hour and you two are wasting time!”

They all stopped what they were doing. Teal'c stood up straighter and raised an eyebrow. Jack's head dropped and they knew Kavith had given him back control.

“Sam...” Daniel started.

“No! Don't Sam me. You know I'm a team player, but I can't do this. Not like this. We have to go back. The rest of Machello's lab, probably all the good bits, are still in Area 51. And I can't do you any good if I get kicked out of the Air Force.” She threw up her hands and shook her head. “I'm packing the gear.” Sam left the room, not waiting to hear anyone argue.

“I believe Major Carter is under a great deal of strain,” Teal'c said.

“Yeah, we got that,” Jack said. “I've never seen Carter lose it.” Then he cocked his head and looked confused.

“Jack?” Daniel wasn't sure what to do. Jack shouldn't come with them. The NID still wanted him. And they might actually win. He looked at Jack with concern. They needed the resources of the SGC to put the puzzle together and solve the code. But they couldn't go there without risking Jack. There had to be another solution. “I'll go after her,” Daniel added, standing up.

“No, let us,” Jack said, standing up. “She's not wrong. We can't stay here much longer. This gate isn't secure and there are no resources here. We'll figure it out.” He walked off down the hall Sam had gone down.

Daniel sighed. “Help me pack up all the papers, Teal'c?”

As they packed, Daniel's thoughts went in circles. He didn't want to leave Jack again. He wasn't sure what was growing between them, but he didn't want to leave it. And it felt like they were onto something with the box and Machello's inventions and the unusual Jaffa Jack had encountered. Not to mention the missing Jaffa. Maybe it connected somehow. It had to be right to follow those leads and not go back. Or maybe he just couldn't stand to deal with Colonel Winstead anymore.

“O'Neill has changed. Do you not agree, Daniel Jackson?”

“Yeah. It makes sense.”

“It does. It is hard for Major Carter to accept. The soldier who follows the tau'ri rules is gone and this is hard for her. I can still see the leader who convinced me that the Jaffa could one day be free of false gods. And you can still see the man you love. But Major Carter does not see the one she once wished to have.”

Daniel nearly sputtered. “What do you mean, Teal'c?”

Teal'c stopped stacking and gathering the papers and looked thoughtful. “SG-1 is a unique group in my experience as a warrior. We each bring different skills to the table. But it has always been O'Neill that united us, in part because we all, in our own ways, are in love with him. But I believe Major Carter does not know how to respect this new version of O'Neill. I admit that I too am surprised by many things about him.”

“But, you believe it's him, right?”

“I do.”

“Okay,” Daniel said. “I guess you're not wrong.”

* * *

“Here's the deal, kids,” Jack said when they regathered in the main lab. They had all their gear. Teal'c and Daniel had finished gathering the papers they wanted and packed them up. Sam stood behind him, looking resolute. “Carter and Teal'c are headed home. Daniel and I are going to make a pit stop and join you in three days. Right, Carter?”

Sam nodded. “Everyone good with the plan?”

“No,” Daniel said. “Jack can't go to Earth. The NID. Even Hammond thinks he's too compromised.”

“Not if we call the Tok'ra in,” Sam said. “They've been in touch. Sort of. I think if we tell them it's an emergency, I can get Dad there.”

“That's hardly a guarantee!”

“No, but given a few days, I think we can prepare things,” Sam insisted. “And I have another idea we can use too, I'd just rather do it with the Tok'ra on hand.”

“No way!” Daniel objected. “It's not worth the risk.”

Jack laid a hand on Daniel's arm. “Kavith needs to see the doohickeys at Area 51. And if we can get Jacob there, I think it'll shake out okay. It's worth the risk. She's got a good plan.”

Daniel was unhappy but looked at Jack's face. He was obviously determined so he nodded.


	12. Talshion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel and Jack arrive on Talshion. Lots of unresolved sexual tension.

It was evening on Talshion when they arrived. Jack identified himself to the guards and asked them some questions about people and events Daniel didn't know about.

“Mind if we walk?” Jack asked. “They'll call one of the cars with the treads but...”

“No, that's fine.”

They started down the road. Daniel hadn't had time to notice much about this planet on their brief stopover two days before. Now, he could see Talshion's moons rising as the sun set. The mountains in the distance. The colorful yellows and purples on the loose fitting clothes worn by the other travelers on the road.

“It's a beautiful planet,” Daniel said. “I see Kali's influence on the architecture?”

Jack nodded. “She's the one who brought them from Earth, yeah. But she didn't last long.”

“But she's back?”

“Maybe.” Jack sounded grim. “They were mostly her Jaffa. But not all. And there was something off about them.”

“They look like they're more advanced technologically than most of the worlds we visit.”

“Oh yeah.” Daniel didn't miss that Jack had the rolling his eyes tone of voice.

“Is there something...”

Jack chuckled. “No. Sorry. It's just Kavith. You're making him puff up with pride. Point out how their indoor plumbing needs work when we get to town. See if you can't make some inroads there and bring his ego down a notch.”

“So he's been coming here for awhile?”

“Oh yeah. He's got his own little pet world.” Jack's head dropped and Daniel heard Kavith's voice instead. _“They are autonomous people, not pets. I do not wish you to have the wrong idea, Daniel.”_ His head dropped again and Jack looked up at Daniel with another eyeroll. “You know I'm just… you know, talking.”

“I know, Jack,” Daniel said. “I don't know if I'll ever get used to that.”

“Yeah, it's weird on this end too.”

They started to pass the stands of a night market set up on the outskirts of the city. Tents and makeshift tables and blankets were set out. Jack chose a little table where an older woman was deep frying large turnovers over a little stove. He bought two and handed Daniel one.

“No food off world?” Daniel joked.

“You got MRE's left you're dying to eat?”

“I'll risk it.” The turnover was hot and spicy, filled with some sort of green potato like concoction. It reminded Daniel a little bit of Egyptian street foods of his youth.

As they got close to the city, he could see the architecture and layout of the wide roads. “Maybe Kavith will talk to me some time about the development of the people here. I'd love to see some more of the wooden books like the one Sanja had. And to learn the writing system.”

“You two are going to gang up on me, aren't you?” Jack said. “Yes, you know he'd love to.”

Daniel grinned.

It was dark and the street was lit by gas lamps by the time they arrived at the house. All the buildings had colorful doors on whitewashed thick plastered walls with no windows on the ground floor. Jack knocked at a bright blue door several times. They waited and a young man opened it, peering out.

He had very light brown eyes and a striking sort of face that was illuminated in the flickering light from the lamps on the street and inside the doorway.

“Jack!” the man said, and threw his arms around him. “That was fast.” He leaned forward and gave Jack a kiss on the lips, friendly and intimate. “And you brought a friend from afar? Are you also Tok'ra?”

Daniel shook his head. “Um, no.” He couldn't help but notice the kiss and Jack's lack of objection to it.

“Daniel, meet Sanja's older brother, Ramsab. Ram, this is Dr. Daniel Jackson.”

“Pleased to meet any of the esteemed one's friends.”

“Esteemed one, huh?”

Jack ignored him. “The brat here?”

“Asleep.”

“We won't wake her then. Send her over in the morning.”

“She'll be so relieved you're back. You're not going to leave her…”

“Taking her with me this time.”

“We are?” Daniel asked, shocked.

“Oh, praise. She… Well...”

Jack laughed. “She's a handful. I know.”

“I couldn't get to work. I have clients, you know, but I thought she might try to go back home so I didn't go to the baths. And she was very rude to Nurse Tabinta. And I think she stole egg fruits from the stand on the corner. And Nurse Tabinta wants to know when you'll hire a tutor for her. Also what happened to the glass eyes you wanted her to wear on her face.”

“Damn glasses. Later.” Jack waved him off. “In the morning, Ram.”

Jack led Daniel to another house, only a few minutes walk. This one, Jack had a large metal key for in his bag and opened the rust red door. Inside was a courtyard, unfurnished, and a stairway that led to the upstairs, a square of rooms with windows that opened into the courtyard. They were also mostly unfurnished, but there were thick sleeping pallets in two of the rooms and some stray chairs and tables as well as a room stacked with piles and piles of books. There were both wooden books and ones Daniel knew must have come from off world. On some makeshift shelves, there were also bits and pieces of scavenged tech. Daniel saw the remains of the radio he had shoved in the bag he packed Jack months before.

Jack had lights that were better than the lamps they'd been seeing. Daniel noticed a sort of generator glowing blue that Jack powered up, lighting up the rooms with a healthy glow.

“You have a house,” Daniel observed.

“Home sweet home,” Jack said.

“There's no lake,” Daniel deadpanned.

“Maybe I'll get back there some time,” Jack said. “Maybe.”

Daniel suddenly realized they were alone but that they wouldn't be for long. There was a mischievous kid who would intrude in the morning. He wanted to know if Jack had engineered it that way. Since the walk they had taken together back at the Borch Festival just days before, Daniel had been feeling like this was something inevitable that was about to happen between them. But now, standing in Jack's home – and just the shock that Jack had a home was huge – Daniel felt less sure. Jack seemed so nonchalant suddenly about returning to Earth that he even planned to take a child who had latched onto him. Or that he had latched on to?

“You're thinking, Daniel,” Jack accused.

“What? Oh, it's just a lot to take in.”

Jack nodded.

“So, who is Ramsab?”

“Sanja's brother. Half-brother actually. He said he wanted to stay in touch, but he's not exactly daddy material. Looked pretty panicked about potentially taking care of her. Doesn't exactly go with his working life.”

“What does he...” Daniel remembered how he had mentioned the baths at the door.

“He's a prostitute, Daniel.”

“Oh.” Daniel thought of the kiss the handsome young man had given Jack at the door.

“I'm going to go get washed up downstairs. Then I'm ready to rest for awhile. Kavith is even going to let us sleep. You should get washed up and get some rest too.” He walked off toward the stairs, not bothering to look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sexual tension resolution coming in the next part. I swear.


	13. At Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack/Kavith and Daniel finally get some alone time. It's fanfic, you can imagine what comes next.

Jack sat on his rooftop terrace, his back to the stone lattice that edged the side toward the street. His eyes watched the stars. From Kavith, he knew the names the Talshonians had given the constellations and he visually traced them with his eyes from star to star, pulling up the name of each one, knowing where each one was and what planets were between them. He could turn his eyes toward Earth if he wanted. And thanks to his symbiote enhanced eyesight, he could see more stars between that human eyes would miss.

/You shouldn't have run away,\ Kavith said.

Jack didn't reply. Daniel was sleeping downstairs on his own mattress. Jack had gone to sleep in Sanja's room for a couple of hours, but that was about all the sleep his body ever needed these days. When he woke up, Kavith didn't ask to take control and Jack didn't offer.

/He looked so forlorn when you brushed past him to wash up.\

Jack felt annoyance. He had enough to deal with without dealing with Daniel's feelings. Who was Kavith to care like that anyway?

/You cannot be jealous of me, friend,\ Kavith practically chuckled. /I think our intentions in this matter are shared.\

Jack bristled. Kavith knew but didn't know how hard this was. He was reconciled to this in so many ways, but it was difficult. And having Daniel in his house was suddenly awkward and scary. He hated feeling like a coward.

/Just be clear with him, friend. He will understand. He's from your own world.\

Jack breathed out, watching the sky. The day was coming soon and the first lightening edges of the sunrise were just peeking up, giving the horizon a light blue glow.

/He will understand,\ Kavith insisted again.

“He won't understand,” Jack said quietly aloud.

“Won't understand what?”

Jack looked over toward the stairs. Daniel was standing in the covered alcove, looking at Jack. He had on his BDU's and had thrown one of Jack's thin wool tapestries over his shoulders for warmth. In the darkness, you couldn't see the colors and Jack was reminded of Daniel in his robes on Abydos.

“Why is it so easy for you?”

“What?” Daniel asked, coming out of the shadows and into the twilight.

“Every language on every planet,” Jack said mildly.

Daniel came to sit across from him, leaning against the stone lattice on the other side.

/Coward,\ Kavith said, though without malice. Jack could feel that sense of love from his symbiote. Unconditional, unchecked love. Where it had once nearly sunk him, it now buoyed him up. He couldn't imagine living without it.

Jack bowed his head, just savoring that feeling.

“Jack?”

“Yeah, that wasn't what I meant,” he said, looking back up. “How is it so easy for you to say to him, to the snake, who is a perfect stranger, like it's no big deal, that yeah, you sleep with men. How do you just do that?”

“Oh,” Daniel said. He cocked his head, watching Jack. “You know, Jack, I never got the whole religious spiel as a kid. My parents were both agnostics. I had a couple of Bible thumping foster homes, but, well, you know the saying, give me a boy at seven, and I'll give you the man? I think it was too late for me. And then I went off and studied anthropology and came of age on a campus where people were still having a lot of free love if you know what I mean. It's never seemed like anything to be particularly ashamed of or worried about in and of itself. Maybe my first time, when a guy made a pass when I was seventeen. I just worked those issues out so long ago, I can barely remember. And it was probably easier because I could always pass. I mean, I do love women, or I used to. I can't quite envision ever loving another woman like I did my wife.”

/He grew to adulthood with a different frame of reference,\ Kavith observed.

The terrace was a thin square around the top of the house. Their legs almost overlapped. Daniel knocked his foot against Jack's. “I'm guessing you grew up hearing a lot of Catholic sin and guilt.”

“Some.”

“That's the other thing, for me. I didn't have anyone to disappoint if they found out I wasn't straight. And I was never military. Not that there can't be prejudice in academia, but it's still easier. And this is all… new, right? That's different too. I'd be freaked too, Jack.”

Jack could feel Kavith refraining from saying I told you so.

It was still an hour before sunrise, but the sky was lighter. Jack scooted himself across the divide and next to Daniel, stretching his legs alongside Daniel's then leaning on his shoulder.

Daniel put an arm around him and brought the wool tapestry over his shoulder as well and it felt wonderful and comforting and arousing all at once. And then some time later, Jack wasn't exactly sure how they maneuvered into the right position, but he felt Daniel's fingers on his cheek running to his chin and moving his mouth toward Daniel's own.

The kiss was slow and hesitant. Lips parted and mouths caressed each other. Daniel tasted clean and slightly of the curry in the turnovers from earlier. With him being so close, Jack could smell him as well, with symbiote enhanced senses, he smelled paper and ink and oil and the faint smell of sulphur that often clung to a person after gate travel as well as Daniel's own musk. Jack breathed him in, taking hits of the masculinity of his smell.

Jack brought his hand up to Daniel's chest, resting it there. Daniel's own came to hold the hand in place, pressing Jack's palm into his chest as his tongue delved into Jack's mouth.

They broke for air, but in case there was any doubt, it was gone now and their mouths met again for more exploration.

It was good that they were going slow because Jack was feeling overwhelmed in every direction. Not only was Daniel's mouth and body overwhelming and good, but the sensations he felt from Kavith were also overwhelming. They were both aroused, both interested, both alert and focused on Daniel. Jack had control, but Kavith was along for the ride, silent, but emotions and impulses pushing alongside Jack's own.

Daniel moved again so that he was on his knees, straddled over Jack, still kissing, still holding Jack's hand against his chest. Only now, Jack could feel their dicks brush against each other, both hard and pressed tight against cloth.

“Oh my god,” Jack said when the kissing next broke. “Oh, Daniel.”

“Is this too fast for you?”

He shook his head. “No. No. I just want…” He paused.

/I want him to press us into the mattress and fuck us hard,” Kavith sent, along with a barrage of images from memory of having just that done to him.

Jack groaned. “Oh, geez,” he said, panting out a breath.

“Are you okay? Did something just...” Daniel looked concerned.

“No,” Jack said. “Or, yes. The snake has a dirty mind.” He groaned again. This was so weird, but if anyone could go along with it, it was Daniel.

“Anything you want to share?” Daniel looked eager and beautiful. It was light enough to see the blue of his eyes and the softness of his features.

“Not this time,” Jack said. “It's… too much.”

“Let's go slow,” Daniel said, moving in for another kiss.

But Jack stopped him. “Daniel, as appealing as that sounds, if I don't come in the next ten minutes, I think I might explode.” Jack placed his hands on Daniel's hips, moving him carefully off so he could stand. “And while my great new knees will definitely take anything we do on the hard ground here, I'd much rather do this on the mattress.” He stretched his hand out to Daniel, who took it and stood.

By the time they got to the bed, Jack felt slightly more in control, but the resumption of kissing, and the experience of having Daniel peel off his clothes then carefully undress him, unfastening the buckles on his pants one by one and sliding them off his hips to puddle on the floor, had him close to the edge again.

/I can keep you here as long as you need,\ Kavith inserted. /You won't lose control if you don't wish to.\

Jack groaned again, but in retrospect it was obvious. Of course the symbiote could draw this out. Or speed it up.

/I'm ready now though,\ Jack tried to explain. He wanted this now, before he lost nerve, while it felt so good.

His hands roamed up Daniel's sides then down again to cup his perfected rounded ass. Jack let his fingers play over Daniel's smooth skin as they sank to the mattress on the ground together.

Jack could see all of Daniel now and he was gorgeous. He'd seen him before, many times, in locker rooms, in the infirmary. This was different. This time, he could rest his gaze on him and appreciate every part of him and he wanted to for the first time. And Daniel was hard. He was uncut, his dick pointing toward his belly even though they'd slid down to rest on their sides, and there was just the smallest gleam of liquid at the tip.

Jack felt dominated in a weird way that he'd never felt during sex. Daniel aligned their bodies so that he was casually, almost lazily thrusting against Jack's own cock. Then he lifted his hand to run his fingers along the side of Jack's face, brushing lightly against his chin and then along his jaw. These were Daniel's fingers, smart fingers, fingers that found precious objects in the ground and expertly read hieroglyphs that were faded from stone edifices. Those smart fingers began to run along Jack's lips, tracing their shape before two of them pushed into Jack's mouth.

On instinct, Jack sucked and had the pleasure of seeing Daniel's eyes slide closed and feel his penis against Jack's own thrust just a little harder. The fingers slid in and out of Jack's mouth, along his tongue. When Daniel withdrew them, Jack moaned slightly.

Daniel chuckled. “I wouldn't stop, but I heard we're supposed to get this show on the road.”

Jack didn't know what to ask for, what he wanted. He was afraid to even think and if it weren't for Kavith's presence in his mind, keeping him calm and level, telling him how good this was, feeling aroused and excited himself, Jack thought he might not have lasted this long, even though it was good, it was so good. He would have been too scared.

/I love you, friend.\

Jack felt it back. He loved Kavith as well. He couldn't articulate it, but he did. It was too much to articulate it. Especially with Daniel there, Daniel who he also loved and couldn't articulate his love for.

Daniel pushed Jack down on his back and moved down his body, kissing then nipping at his chest. He pushed Jack's legs apart and came to kneel between them.

When he sank his mouth down on Jack's straining erection, it wasn't a surprise. Jack had known where this was headed. He'd been on the receiving end of enough blow jobs to know. But the intensity of the sensation had him straining from the moment he felt wet warmth surround him. Daniel took him deep, his tongue rubbing at the underside of Jack's cock and the back of his mouth sucking him down. The sounds of wet slurping, which should have seemed crass or discordant, were driving Jack crazy. As Daniel bobbed up and down, bringing a hand to wrap around the base that he couldn't quite take down, Jack realized that when he said he wanted to do this fast, Daniel had taken it to heart. And had the skills to make it happen too.

He moaned and stopped trying to hold back his hips, which took up the pace Daniel set.

/Now, yes, now,\ Kavith practically whispered in his mind.

The orgasm was intense and drawn out. He shuddered and managed to open his eyes only at the end, to see Daniel's lips sealed around him, eyes heavily lidded and blissed out, looking up at him, swallowing. The image was one he thought would be burned in his mind for eternity. It would probably be still with him when he was gone, shared with some new host when he thought about moments of perfect pleasure.

Inside, Jack felt Kavith's amusement and satisfaction.

Jack's head fell back to the mattress as Daniel gently released him.

He was now straddling one of Jack's legs, up on his knees, masturbating himself. Jack could see the head of his dick, red and straining. Their eyes met and Daniel laid down next to him, continuing to touch himself.

“Jack, that was amazing,” he said.

“Isn't that supposed to be my line?”

Daniel reached his hand over to Jack's, not stopping the leisurely pace he set on himself with the other one. He pulled Jack's hand to his cock, inviting him to stroke and touch. Jack did, trying to imitate what Daniel was doing, moving in unison with him. Daniel sighed and began thrusting into Jack's hand faster. Seconds later, Jack watched, fascinated, as Daniel's come splattered through his fingers and onto his chest. Daniel moaned low and needy as he came. His face tightened then relaxed into a look of pure release.

Then he leaned forward and kissed Jack full on the mouth. Jack could taste his own come there. He'd had that experience before, with women. It had never been a turnoff, but it wasn't a kink either. However, as Daniel's tongue met his, the taste of Jack's own bitter release still on his mouth, he felt a wave of pleasure from Kavith's senses that surprised him and turned the kiss into a much deeper embrace than the finishing up kiss Daniel had probably intended it to be.

It ended eventually and Daniel curled onto him, not seeming to mind the wet spot they'd created between them. “Mind if I…?” he asked, nestling in sleepily.

Jack couldn't quite form words properly. “Yeah. Do. Daniel.”

From Kavith, he felt the background hum of affection rise up and blanket him as he held Daniel in his arms.


	14. Domesticity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack/Kavith and Daniel hang out with Sanja for a couple of days.

Daniel awoke to Sanja sitting on the stool on the other side of the room, reading a book and singing quietly.

“Um, Jack?” The inappropriateness of the scene, even though he was covered in sheets, seemed pretty surprising. But Sanja seemed utterly blasé.

“She won't leave,” Jack said. “And I didn't want to leave you. But now that you're up, I think I'll go wash up.” He winked at Daniel then stood up, holding a sheet.

“Are you leaving again?” Sanja demanded. “Jack, where are you going?”

“She's not going to follow you into the bathroom, is she?” Daniel asked.

Jack laughed but Sanja dogged him all the way to the washing up space by the house well. “Can I take three books? And we still haven't had breakfast and it's really late. Can we go to the tenth day market before we go?”

Jack pulled the curtains on her. “Sanja. Shut it. Go find something around the house to do before I take away all your books!”

Jack heard Daniel coming downstairs and peeked out, seeing him hastily dressed again. “Jack, that's a horrible threat!” He actually sounded appalled.

Jack really didn't have too much to do for the next two days. He had wanted to check into the status of things on Talshion and retrieve Sanja, but by the end of the day, he'd finished most of his necessary business. Daniel was antsy, he could tell. He had to remind himself that humans in general were antsy, on a different timetable for their lives.

/Humans,\ Kavith practically snorted at him. /You have changed, friend.\

Jack couldn't argue the point.

So for nearly two days, Jack let Sanja show Daniel around the city and let the two of them teach each other. It kept both of them out of trouble.

The evening of the first night, Sanja curled up in Jack's bed and fell asleep while Jack and Daniel played chess with a set Jack was making out of bits of wood. The night was rainy but the electric lights kept the house from feeling gloomy.

“She's really smart, Jack,” Daniel said once it was clear the little girl was completely sacked out.

“Yeah. But…?”

“I wasn't going to say a but.”

“Well, I will. But she also causes trouble everywhere she goes.”

At the market, she had stolen a sweet cake and tried to free all the birds in the bird market. Jack had nabbed her in the midst of opening a second cage and carted her off scolding her.

“Maybe.”

“She'll get better. She only lost her mother a few months ago.”

Daniel looked at the little carved chess piece. “Are you… will you stick around for her?”

Jack didn't know how to answer that. They were about to go to Earth. He couldn't stop doing what he was doing. And anything could happen, there or on Earth or out in the rest of the galaxy. If the Tok'ra recalled him, he would be pretty well screwed, though Kavith had disobeyed orders before. But Sanja was as important as all that. He searched for the words to explain it to Daniel, especially knowing Daniel had never been a parent before and Jack now had several lifetimes of parenting memories to draw from.

But Daniel clearly took his pause as a hesitation. “You shouldn't do this to her, Jack. If you're leaving her, take it from someone who has been where she is, it's better to rip the band-aid off. If you're leaving, find her a home and leave. She needs stability.”

“Is that what you lacked?”

Daniel made a face. “Among other things, I guess.”

“You don't talk about it. Was it that bad?”

“If you're asking if I was abused or something the answer is not really. There was one family...” He rolled his eyes. “It was all pretty mundane childhood horrors when you come down to it. Mostly I was bored.”

“Mostly,” Jack said. “I'll bet mostly you were unloved.”

“That too.”

There was a silence in the room. Jack knocked over his king despite Kavith's objections. “Brat's asleep. Let's sit in the courtyard.”

They went downstairs to the alcoves around the house's courtyard. Daniel thought it was a funny design for a home, but it seemed to be standard on Talshion. They sat in a corner on a low, wide bench with heavy sand-filled pillows. The whole house was funny, Daniel thought. Half furnished, half finished, half Kavith, half Jack.

“You know,” Jack said as they settled in. “You've never been a parent.”

Daniel sighed and nodded, conceding the obvious point. “But why? I mean, why are you the right one to adopt her?”

“She was there when we… when I...”

/When we agreed to this blending.\

“Yeah,” Jack said. “When we agreed to this blending. She helped in a weird way. Daniel, it's sort of hard to explain. She wants to stay with us, we want to take care of her. It'll work out. Or it won't. But we'll try our best.”

“Don't get me wrong,” Daniel said after a few minutes. “I like her.”

“That's good. I hear it can be hard for single dads to get laid.”

“Oh, is that why we came downstairs?”

“I was trying not to be too obvious.” Jack leaned back and let a bare foot run along Daniel's thigh.

“That's not obvious.” Daniel gesticulated at him. 

A sudden wash of memories of Daniel waving arms at him, gesturing wildly, ran through his mind in an instant, made bright and crisp by Kavith's accessing it.

“What's that?” Daniel asked as he leaned forward, straddling himself across Jack's hips.

“What's what?”

“That look you just got. It's Kavith, right?”

Jack shrugged. He ran his hand over Daniel's hip, up his back, down to his ass. “Yeah. He likes to browse my memories sometimes.”

“Memories of what?” Daniel sat back on his heels, now seated on Jack's thighs. He ran his hands up under Jack's shirt, tap dancing over his chest, teasing at his nipples.

“This time just of you, arguing with me like the idiot you are sometimes.”

“The idiot you're about to have sex with, huh?”

Jack grinned. “That idiot, yeah.” He moved his hands to the edge of Daniel's shirt, pulling it up and over his head, then allowing Daniel to do the same to him while he was still up.

Daniel captured his lips in a kiss as soon as Jack's shirt was off. Jack marveled again at how kissing Daniel was different from any woman he could remember kissing. He could feel the prickle of Daniel's stubble on his lips as they strayed up to suck at his upper lip.

Jack leaned back again, hands on Daniel's chest, appreciating how smooth it was and how muscled Daniel had gotten. He flashed again on a memory that Kavith pulled from his mind on Daniel carting half a library through the gate on their first trip to Abydos, his hair floppy and loose under his boonie, his frame skinnier and his demeanor less assured. Kavith liked the contrast as much as Jack did. /He was beautiful then too,\ he observed to Jack.

Daniel cocked his head slightly as he leaned over to kiss Jack again and Jack knew he hadn't missed his second of distraction.

“Is this weird for you?” Jack asked. “Is it too weird?”

“What do you mean?”

It didn't seem too weird. Daniel hadn't really stopped what he was doing. He stretched himself out over Jack and he could feel the warm press of Daniel's erection against his hip as Daniel nuzzled into his neck, kissing and nipping at him.

But it was weird. And maybe Daniel would freak.

“When we do this, Kavith is here too, you know.”

“I know.”

“You don't mind that...”

“I like Kavith,” Daniel interrupted him. Then he distracted Jack by grinding down against him. Jack lifted his hips to meet Daniel's pressure. “Is it too weird for you?” Then Daniel chuckled. “Do you not want to share me?”

Jack could feel Kavith turned on by Daniel's words even as Jack was becoming too aroused to finish the conversation he had started in any meaningful way. “Don't have much choice, do I?”

Daniel pulled back slightly, looking into Jack's eyes. He was still above him and Jack felt that sense of being dominated run through him like a shiver again. “Is it okay, for you?”

/Is it?\

Jack felt the shiver increase. “Yes,” he whispered. “It has to be.”

He didn't want to think about the anger that he'd carried those first weeks. He didn't want to think about the anger and grief he'd carried most of his life in various forms that Kavith was slowly easing away from him. He didn't want to think about anything. He felt that increasingly familiar sensation of Kavith's love blanketing him. It was okay.

/Be in the moment, friend,\ Kavith urged.

And somehow Jack was. Everything else slid away and there was just Daniel, holding his wrists down and grinding against him, Daniel getting flipped on his back as Jack pushed him down, Daniel stripping off their clothes.

Kavith wanted things, things Jack didn't feel ready for and Jack could feel his desires as Daniel kissed and fondled and rubbed against him. It was all so overwhelming. The differences in his body since the blending felt most pronounced during sex. His perfect knees, his increased strength and stamina, his perfect control. It wasn't that Jack had felt like an out of control teenager during sex in a long time, but now he seemed to have both the drive and arousal of his 18 year-old self and the control of his 48 year-old self. And then there was the newness of this attraction, the way he looked at Daniel's body and felt such longing. It was intense and overpowering.

Jack wasn't ready for the things Kavith wanted, but drawing on Kavith's memories, Jack gingerly knelt over Daniel's erection, wanting to reciprocate what Daniel had given him two nights before. Daniel hummed contentedly as Jack stroked him and lifted his tongue to taste.

Running up and down the shaft, Jack felt he just tasted like skin, but as he opened his mouth and took Daniel as far in as he could, the smell of him was almost too much for a moment and Jack froze, caught for a second in the wrongness of this, of having Daniel in his mouth, of being able to smell the muskiness between his legs, of being so attracted to him in the first place.

But then Daniel's hand ran over his hair and Kavith's presence made itself known quietly in the back of his head and his panic turned to arousal again. Jack relaxed his jaw did his best to do all the things he liked. Daniel's enthusiastic moans gave him more pleasure than the actual experience of sucking him off, and when he came, he couldn't stop his reflexive pull away, but Daniel didn't seem to care.

Daniel pulled Jack up over and him and finished him with his hands, using his own come as a lubricant, his fingers gripping and pulling Jack over the edge.

“When we get to Earth,” Daniel said, his voice sleep heavy, “will this be over?”

Jack didn't reply. If he replied, he would have to think about the consequences and the logistics. Instead, he pulled Daniel closer and kissed him.


	15. Back on Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has a plan to prove whether Jack is Jack with some borrowed technology. Jacob Carter and Selmak are suspicious. Also, it turns out Sanja still has her knife.

At the last minute, Jack felt like he might panic when they got to Earth if SF's swarmed in and did who knew what, especially with Daniel and Sanja standing right there. So he handed control to Kavith.

He had Sanja's hand clutched as they went through the gate. When they emerged on the other side, he was relieved to see Carter and Teal'c standing in the gateroom along with Jacob Carter. There were SF's armed, but nothing alarming.

“Jack?” Jacob said, stepping forward as the event horizon blinked out of existence.

 _“He's here,”_ Kavith replied.

Jacob's head went down and he came up, speaking as Selmak. _“General Hammond, the test I spoke of can be performed in the infirmary now.”_

“Sanja, why don't you come with me?” Daniel said, trying to coax her away while Jack went with Jacob and Selmak.

“No!” Sanja actually snarled and growled at them all and gripped onto Jack's leg.

Jacob raised an eyebrow, taking control back from his symbiote. “Still picking up strays, I see, Kavith.”

Jack took control from Kavith. “Kid stays with me, gentlemen,” he announced to the nervous looking SF's.

“Jack, is there some reason you've brought a child to the SGC?” General Hammond's voice sounded from above.

“She is part of his kin group now,” Teal'c said.

“T gets it,” Jack said. He reached down and lifted Sanja up. “Stop acting like a feral animal, midget,” he said to her genially. “You're going to give them the right idea.”

The SF's looked uncomfortable but Jacob Carter chuckled. “Reminds me of one of my kids at that age.”

“Um, Dad,” Carter said.

* * *

It took a few hours for things to get worked out. Dr. Fraiser had tests with all her needles and Selmak had tests with a Tok'ra gene scanning device that was meant to match Kavith's DNA with what they had on file.

Once Jacob Carter had the DNA results, he sat down across from Jack in a private office. After having been in the SGC for a little while, Sanja finally consented to let Daniel show her his lab.

“I can't decide if I'm glad it's Kavith or disgusted,” Jacob said. “Is a trial in order?”

“We'd really rather you didn't do that,” Jack said mildly. They'd talked about this. Kavith knew he'd broken the highest law of the Tok'ra when he took Jack as a host.

“The Jack I knew would rather have died than been a host.”

Jack shrugged. “Thought about it. Changed my mind.”

“I'm just trying to get the lay of the land here.”

/They think I've gone rogue.\ Kavith's voice was cold.

“Trying to see if I'm me, you mean.” Jack's head dropped. _“I assure you, Jack is still himself,”_ Kavith said.

“The Jack I know wouldn't stand for this. You should have left.”

_“I tried. It was too late. I thought we would die together. But then he changed his mind.”_

“Just like that, huh?”

_“Of course not. But there was a crisis and we managed to find common ground.”_

Jacob raised one eyebrow. “Care to elaborate on that?”

_“We killed some Jaffa together and didn't kill a little girl.”_

“That doesn't make a lot of sense.”

/Tell him you had to be there,\ Jack suggested.

_“You had to be there.”_

“Is it evidence for or against that you sound like Jack?” Jacob mused.

Jack took back control. “It's evidence that I'm really me,” he said, angrily. “What do you want, Jacob? There's a whole lot of shit going down out there and we need to get back in the game. Kali's got Jaffa attacking old worlds that no one has messed with in centuries. And Eshu is egging everyone on to attack Earth. You wouldn't believe the rumors I was picking up listening in on chatter at the Borch Festival. Something's not right out there. Something that isn't just the SGC destabilizing everything again.”

“See, now you sound like Kavith.”

Jack stilled. There was something in Jacob's voice.

/Tread carefully, friend,\ Kavith warned. /If they're convinced I am goa'uld now, you can be sure Selmak won't hesitate to see me dead.\ 

“You're authorized to take me out.”

“Not without proof.”

“And how are you going to get that?”

* * *

Sam had the Tollan separation device in the isolation room. When Jack entered, he felt a funny shiver, thinking of the last time they were there, imprisoned, forced into this bonding that neither of them wanted.

/To be fair, you wanted it,\ Jack said.

But it was water under the bridge. Kavith didn't even respond. Jack had seen the device work on Ska'ara, but Kavith had never seen it and was nervous. Jack let his symbiote pull the memories of that experience, but it didn't exactly calm him down.

“Sorry, Sir,” Carter said as she slipped the device over his head. “We just had to be sure.”

General Hammond stood in the back of the room, flanked by two SF's.

“It's okay. I should have thought it of myself.”

“Ready?”

He nodded. /Calm down,\ he sent to Kavith. /It's only...\

His thought was interrupted by Sam activating the device. When he'd seen it applied to Ska'ara, it had seemed peaceful. This didn't feel peaceful at all. He felt like he was being half ripped apart.

“What the hell is going on with this?” Jack gasped. /There's something wrong with it,\ he tried to tell Kavith, but he knew suddenly he was talking to himself.

“Jack?” Hammond asked. “Which color is he, Major?”

“That's him, Sir,” Sam replied, gesturing to the green light on Jack's chest. “It should be active. I don't know if he's been injured or… If the symbiote is hurting him it shouldn't be able to with the separation...”

Jack clutched his head. “Get this damned thing off me,” he said.

“We can't do that,” Sam replied. “Sir, Colonel O'Neill? Are you… Do you know what's going on?”

Jack felt like his body wasn't his own. He knew he was moving his hands, but something about it didn't seem right. And inside, there was a crushing sense of depression crashing all around him. Was this supposed to act like this? It hadn't done anything like this before, had it? And where was Kavith? If he felt this way, how did Kavith feel?

He got an answer, in a way. The light on his chest turned a glowing crimson and he felt like he was having an out of body experience. Then he heard Kavith's voice, uncomfortable and worried, but he felt no connection with it.

_“I cannot feel Jack. Please tell me this will be brief.”_

“Is that him?” Jack asked, feeling his own voice creak out of his throat.

“Sir, is he… can you tell us if you're being coerced or controlled, Sir?” Sam asked. When Jack didn't immediately answer, she said, “Are you okay, Sir?”

“Carter, do I look okay?” Jack didn't feel okay at all. In fact, he was pretty sure he was crying, which didn't seem right at all, but he didn't think he knew how to stop.

“Does that mean our fears about this Tok'ra are right?” Hammond asked.

“I don't think so,” Jacob said quietly. “Jack, can you take a deep breath. It's not supposed to hurt you.”

“Then you put the damned thing on,” Jack hissed.

“It wasn't meant to be worn by Tok'ra.”

“God. I feel so empty,” Jack said.

“It's him,” Jacob said quietly.

“Dad, it really sounds like...”

“Jack, If you want to remain a host, need you to tell everyone in clear terms that you do. And then we'll fix it,” Jacob said.

Jack had to force his voice out of him. “I want to be Kavith's host,” he said. “Please?” The please felt weak, but he felt weak. And more alone than he'd ever felt. And strangely detached.

 _“Fix this now,”_ Jack heard Kavith's voice, without feeling himself speaking, even though he knew it was coming from him. _“I will not have my host distressed this way.”_

 _“We apologize,”_ Selmak said. “Major Carter, will you please remove the device. I had reservations about its use on a Tok'ra but I had no idea it would be so painful.”

Jack felt Sam's hands on him, working quickly to remove the device from his chest. The moment it turned off, he felt an enormous sense of relief. He felt whole again, like the chasm inside his head had been fixed,

/Here, friend.\

/Here,\ Jack said in return. If he could have gone back and told himself a year ago that he would have felt this happy about getting reconnected with a snake like that, he never would have believed it. But he loved the snake. There was no doubt about it.

The door to the isolation room burst open and Sanja came running in, followed solemnly by Teal'c, who appeared to be holding a rag over a cut on his arm. Daniel followed behind both of them.

“Jack,” Daniel complained. “You gave her a knife?”

“Gave is probably the wrong word,” Jack said. “It was hers.”

Sanja barreled into him. “They were hurting you.”

“Not on purpose,” Jack said, gripping his head and still feeling unsettled by the way he was reassuring himself with Kavith's presence. “And it's all done. Everyone believes me now, right? DNA and wonky Tollan technology. Now we're good, right? No more tests?”

* * *

Sanja refused to unglue herself from Jack, or relinquish her knife, for the next week, which made for some interesting security conversations. In the end, the solution was to make Jack a visiting off world diplomat. Visiting off world diplomats had wide authority to bring any odd thing they wanted, even children.

They didn't let Jack leave the SGC, but instead sent a huge crate of things from Machello's lab to the Mountain. Kavith and Daniel got down to the business of sorting through the papers and trying to decipher Machello's codes.

As she helped move things into one of the big labs in the SGC, Carter looked more nervous than she had her first time through the gate. Daniel looked oblivious, since he was caught in Machello's papers, but Jack couldn't miss the way she kept looking at him in confusion and at Sanja warily. When Daniel left, grousing, to deal with some things Colonel Winstead wanted done, Jack decided he should probably talk to her.

/It can be difficult to see someone you know change,\ Kavith observed.

/Yeah, yeah.\

/It can be even more difficult if it's someone you are in love with.\

/Carter was never in love with me,\ Jack objected.

/Oh?\

Jack didn't know how to explain, but he'd been in units with women for long enough to understand how sometimes you fell in love with all your teammates, just a little bit. And how confusing those feelings could be. Maybe she had been in love with him a little, but not in a way that was real outside of SG-1. A little fear nagged at him about Daniel as he tried to sort through this, but he pushed it aside.

“Hey, T, can you take the midget to the commissary and introduce her to Froot Loops?” Jack asked.

“The last time I was with her, she stabbed me,” Teal'c pointed out calmly.

Jack looked at Sanja, who was on her belly across his feet, propped on her elbows, looking at a book Daniel had brought her and trying out every single shade of highlighter on a pad of legal paper. “She's not going to take the knife out again, right?” he moved his foot and prodded her gently.

“If anyone hurts you I'll stab everyone,” she agreed. “What are fruit loopies? Like egg fruits or yarberries?”

“Like tiny, crunchy cakes,” Jack said. “No knife.”

“As good as festival cakes?”

“Sweeter. And you can have as many bowls as you like.”

Sanja jumped up, leaving the book and markers. “Where?”

“O'Neill, if she pulls out her weapon again, we will have words,” Teal'c said, but he led her away.

“Carter?” Jack said, then he started again. “Sam?”

She looked up from where she had been organizing boxes of Machello's inventions. He could almost see the moment she pulled back from calling him sir. “Yes?”

“We good?”

/That's all you've got for your emotional moment with an old friend?\ He could feel Kavith laughing at him.

“Of course,” she said, automatically, not meeting his eyes.

“Look, Sam. I'm still the same me in here.”

“But are you?” She looked up then cast her eyes back down. “I'm sorry. It's none of my business.”

“Of course it's your business. We're friends, right?” When she didn't respond, Jack went on. “It's weird, yeah. But we deal in weird. I thought you might get it.”

“Sir… Jack, it really isn't… I'm just glad it's you. I'm sorry about the Tollan device, that it hurt you. I don't know what went wrong.”

“Kavith thinks it stops our brains from working together or something. I don't know. I'm not mad at you about it. I'm just glad it's cleared up.”

She nodded.

“Geez, Sam, what do you want me to say?”

“Nothing. Since my dad's here, I'm going on leave for a couple of days. We're going to go see Mark and the kids. And then we'll be back.” She paused. “Dr. Lee should be able to help, but be careful with this stuff. You know how Machello's inventions are. And, I, um, hope you're happy. You and Daniel, I mean.”

Jack tried to figure out how to respond to that, but Sam clearly didn't want to talk more and left quickly.


	16. Decoded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Kavith negotiate being on Earth and work on figuring out Machello's notes. Daniel takes a trip through the gate. Jacob and Selmak are nervous.

Jack found it easier to let Kavith be in charge as they sorted through Machello's documents. He didn't know what he was doing with most of that stuff and it was easier in some ways to not be home when he didn't want to deal with people who used to be subordinates as they tried to figure out how to address him. Most of them looked at him with pity and then with uncomfortable surprise when they heard Kavith's voice.

Jack also enjoyed watching Kavith and Daniel together. Daniel could put himself in people's heads and figure out how they thought. Kavith was good at puzzles and codes. Together, they complimented each other, worked off each other's ideas, sparked new ones in each other. If it had been anyone else, Jack realized he might have been jealous. But this was different. Like watching your lover make nice with your family. Except even more intimate. It was a new experience. So many things were new experiences now.

_“I think you have this right. If you are correct, then tomorrow we can begin to decode everything in the papers related to the box. And the papers related to the Jaffa. It will be a… what did you call it? A Rose Stone?”_

“Rosetta Stone,” Daniel smiled, but it turned into a yawn.

_“You are tired.”_

“No. Well, yes. But this is engrossing. Still, I am going to have to get some rest. And if I don't get out of here, I'll go stir crazy soon. Is Jack… whenever we got stuck inside doing research like this for days on end, Jack always went nearly mad messing with everyone's things and distracting us.”

/Hey!\

Kavith chuckled. _“Jack is more interested than he wants to let on. He is quite good at codes as well. We are well suited in this way.”_

“I always thought Jack was smarter than he liked to let people realize.”

_“Yes. He is not humble. But he likes to lower expectations and surprise people.”_

/Stop talking about me like I can't hear you,\ Jack grumbled, and he felt Kavith smile using his own mouth.

Daniel yawned again and Kavith stood, coming behind him and beginning to rub his neck. Daniel leaned back and made a happy little noise.

Jack could feel Kavith's pleasure at touching Daniel, even just in a massage, a chair back between them. They had not done this yet. It felt like sharing a lover, yet Jack knew it was different. More new experiences.

/Don't,\ he said, reluctantly.

/You do not wish me to touch him?\

/It's not that. Just not here.\

Kavith's hands drifted down and Daniel looked up. “I should probably get going. I think General Hammond is going to let you go off base with an escort, if...”

They were interrupted by Sanja bursting in, followed by Janet, who was wearing a stern look.

_“Sanja, I suspect you have been bothering Dr. Fraiser.”_

“I'm bored. Why aren't there other kids on this planet?”

Daniel laughed. “There are. Just not near the stargate.”

Jack assumed control. “Doc, I'm really sorry for whatever she...”

“No more,” Janet interjected. “I don't usually advocate putting leashes on children, but we might have to make an exception.”

Sanja made a face and Jack reached down and scooped her up. For a moment she looked like she might struggle, but then she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. “Sorry,” he said.

“I only know of one teenage babysitter authorized to come to the SGC. Luckily she's free this weekend. I suggest you give a generous contribution to her college fund for her trouble though, Jack.”

“You hear that, midget? A cool older kid is going to come chase you tomorrow and keep you out of trouble.” Jack sighed. “She really needs to get outside.”

“I have good news on that front. The general has authorized for the both of you to leave as long as you have an escort.”

“Oh thank goodness,” Daniel said. “It's about time.”

“I'm pretty sure when Sanja sprayed soda all over his office, it enticed General Hammond to give you permission to get her out of here,” Janet said dryly.

Jack used a single finger to push Sanja's head back slightly and look her in the eyes. “You didn't.”

“That stuff bubbles everywhere,” Sanja said.

* * *

Being back on Earth was strange. Jack had thought he might never be able to return. It had turned out to be easier than he'd expected. But also more difficult. He would have to close up his house, ship things places. He could put things in storage, he supposed.

Jack drove them to Daniel's house and they let Sanja wreak havoc in some of the snow drifts left in Daniel's backyard. Daniel held his hand as they stood in the doorway and then leaned his head on Jack. On Talshion, it had felt so right but now Jack was jarred by doing these things on Earth.

Sanja was cold and muddy when they brought her inside and Jack managed to make her strip and get in a warm bath. By the time he got her in the spare bed, Daniel was out cold, which was just as well.

/Stop having doubts,\ Kavith chided him. /The taboo nature of your relationship is bothering you more now that you're on your home planet. But it is not bothering Daniel.\

/It's not that,\ Jack said, though maybe it was, a little bit. Part of what made it strange to be back on Earth was that he didn't feel tied there. He wanted to go back to the cabin because it was his own place, but nearly all his close relatives were dead. He had lost his job. There was no one to disappoint if he were to declare that he was in love with another man.

/You want to disappoint someone? Who?\ Kavith asked.

/You don't get it.\

/I think I do, friend. It is difficult to realize that you have changed. And perhaps even more difficult to think that few people here will be disturbed by the ways you have changed.\

/Yeah. That.\ Jack wandered into Daniel's kitchen. /Take over, will you? You should have fun with all of Daniel's books and discover Earth television. I didn't do much today, but I'm still kind of beat.\

Jack stayed in retreat, thinking, while Kavith played with the CD player and finally settled on listening to a long box set of Charlie Parker Daniel had while pulling books off Daniel's shelves and stacking them everywhere as he read.

In the morning, Daniel looked confused at the untidy mess Kavith had made of his living room, but Jack just shrugged. “I let the snake play with your stuff.”

“Um...” Daniel looked around. “Maybe tell Kavith to put the books back next time. And the CD's?”

“Don't worry. Next time we're listening to opera.”

Daniel sighed and continued heading toward the kitchen for coffee.

On the way to the Mountain, they stopped at a large bookstore and Daniel bought Sanja a sizable stack of children's books and a box of art supplies. She looked excited about the colorful pictures. Jack was dubious that it would keep her out of trouble, but he supposed he could hope. At least it was something to give Cassie to do with her. She couldn't read the books herself very well, at least not yet. Maybe Cassie would also help her with the alphabet.

“We really need to get her glasses,” Jack said. “I guess there's not time now, but no one has invented them on Talshion and she ditched the pair that we went to the Borch Festival and bought.”

“I don't need glass on my face!” Sanja complained from the backseat of the car.

“If you're going to read that stack of books you will,” Jack said. “I should probably buy her a stockpile worth.”

Back in the lab, Daniel and Kavith got to work translating now that they had the code. However, Daniel was called away again by Colonel Winstead, who stood in the lab watching them for awhile before finally interrupting to explain that he and Teal'c needed Daniel for a mission through the gate.

Kavith looked up at him. _“Is this absolutely necessary, Colonel? I have been greatly appreciative of Daniel's help here. We are making progress on the very documents we need in order to understand the nature of the device that Kali's Jaffa were so eager to obtain.”_

Colonel Winstead looked stiff and, Jack realized, nervous. Jack wondered if he had objected to their presence and been overruled. “Teal'c received intelligence this morning that some of the missing rebel Jaffa are back on Chulak. It's time sensitive. Major Carter is still on leave, but Dr. Jackson is here and I'd strongly prefer to move out with our full complement. Lt. Hailey is going to join us as well.”

Daniel looked torn, but he nodded. “I'll be back tomorrow,” he told Kavith and Jack before leaving to get geared up. Life at the SGC, Jack supposed.

The rest of the day went smoothly. Kavith made progress with Machello's notes and Cassie miraculously kept Sanja out of trouble, mostly by bribing her constantly with sweets from the commissary. Jack poked in on them at the end of the day. Sanja was happily occupied with some sort of bright cartoon about singing animals and Cassie was doing geometry homework.

“Hey, Uncle Jack,” Cassie said with a sideways grin. “Mom says keeping her out of trouble is worth all my freshman year textbooks and pocket money to go to the movies tonight.”

Jack nodded and asked how school was going. Cassie launched into a long discussion of teachers and schoolwork and she sounded so American, so assimilated, that Jack had to remind himself several times that she wasn't exactly from here.

“Thanks,” he said. “I hope she wasn't too bad.”

“Nah,” Cassie said. Then, quietly, she added, “It was weird though. I mean, when I came, I was all quiet all the time. I held everything inside. She's like the opposite. But some of the things she said. I'd forgotten how weird this planet was when I first got here. All the sweet foods, all the instant everything, the TV, the variety of stuff, all the different kinds of people everywhere. It's just funny. You forget, especially because there's no one to tell.”

“You can tell us.”

Cassie shrugged. “Sure. I know. Is… I mean, are you going to stick around? Mom said… Um…”

“Probably not. I'll be back to visit. Check in on you. Make sure you show up to a certain future appointment.” Jack realized with a start that he would probably still be alive and around when Cassie had to be at the gate to meet them in the future. They had talked to her about it. He knew Sam had gone over it with her several times, just to make sure she knew, in case something happened to them. Now he could be there to make sure it happened. If he wanted to.

“Okay,” Cassie said. She sounded disappointed. “I'll see her tomorrow I guess. And if you do come back, you should come say hello to me. It was kind of fun to have another kid who sort of gets it. How weird this place is. Weird good. And maybe in a few years she'll have calmed down.”

Jack nodded. “Let's hope so.”

They stayed at the Mountain and Sanja was a lot more subdued that night. “Can we see snow again?” she asked.

“Wait until you see it falling from the sky,” Jack promised. Then he got pulled into telling a long story about his first winter as a kid getting snowed in at the cabin. They had gone for Christmas, his mother kicking and screaming about the hassle, then they'd gotten stuck for almost two weeks in one of the worst blizzards of his childhood. He told her about snow forts and making ice cream snow every night for dessert and huddling around the wood stove for warmth every night, flicking drops of melted snow onto the top and watching them sizzle away. Sanja listened until she fell asleep. Kavith listened and pulled images from Jack's mind. He had never lived on a cold planet or stayed for very long.

In the morning, Selmak and Jacob Carter were back. Jack found Jacob in the lab going over the work he'd done with Machello's notes, looking dubious.

Inwardly Jack dreaded this. Before, they'd barely talked. Selmak had shared with Kavith who had lived and died. They'd had relatively few losses, but they were on the run again, laying low for the most part. Kavith was relieved to hear that the Tok'ra were surviving. Resistance. And he wanted to press them, to force them to act. But at the time time, he knew they wouldn't listen. And Selmak was likely to order him to do something he didn't want to do, like leave off chasing down Kali or protecting Talshion. The Tok'ra didn't like Talshion, they definitely didn't share Kavith's goal to keep it safe.

“Jacob,” Jack said. “Good couple of days with the grandkids?”

“Bigger than last time,” Jacob said. “Looks like you've been busy.”

“All Kavith, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“We almost have whatever the Jaffa I'm after were looking for,” Jack said.

“You're after,” Jacob said. “Your own personal crusade, huh?”

Jack shrugged and sat down at the table across from Jacob.

“Jack O'Neill and Kavith,” Jacob said. “Double the maverick, I guess.”

“We get along,” Jack said carefully.

Jacob laughed. “I never thought I'd see this. I could barely believe it the other day.”

“You thought the Tollan device would show I was being used.”

“Maybe. Hell, Jack, I didn't know. I wouldn't have been surprised any way. Not with Kavith involved.”

/I would never turn goa'uld,\ Kavith bristled with anger at the reminder.

/Yeah, he got that.\

/Selmak does not get it. None of Egeria's children do. We'll never be more than second class to them. We'll always be less than trustworthy. We always have been.\

“I pissing him off?” Jacob asked.

“I might be getting an earful,” Jack admitted.

Jacob chuckled. “Part of me wishes you'd stayed presumed dead. Taking this back to the Council won't be fun.”

Jack felt Kavith reach for control and reluctantly let him have it. _“Sometimes I think the Council would burn Talshion to the ground just so they never have to bother with it again.”_

“Kavith, come on.”

_“It's worse. Sometimes I think the Council would happily adopt the tactics of the Re'tu and kill off all of humanity if we didn't need them as hosts ourselves.”_

_“That is enough,”_ Selmak said.

_“Go ahead and tell me how I'm being recalled to sit in a cave and wait for a decade.”_

_“You are being overly influenced by your host.”_

_“Me? That's rich. Surely you have heard the rumbles. Better to die than end up with a host from among the Tau'ri. Look at what Jacob Carter did to Selmak. They say you are the one who is overly influenced.”_

Jacob took control back. “There's no need for this. We've established we are who we all say we are. No one is being coerced.”

_“But I assume the Council is about to coerce me.”_

“No we're not. It's no secret that the Council has been divided lately. The Tau'ri have mucked everything up. And the System Lords are in chaos. The Council is divided about nearly everything these days. No one knows what to do. If you think they're taking time to come haul you back in when we're on the run from a two bit System Lord like Eshu and have lost a dozen spies in the last two years alone, then you're more self-centered than I would have believed.”

_“Then why have you come?”_

“My kid called and said it was urgent. Can't a father come visit and help out sometimes?”

Jack could feel Kavith practically pouting, doubtful. He took control back. “Seems reasonable to me. Especially if you're going to leave us alone.”

Jacob shrugged. “I can't promise anything. Look, I'm here for another couple of days. I'll help you and Sammy with this mess. And then I'm on my way. I'm going to report all this to the Council, but they think they have bigger fish to fry.”

“They're deluding themselves,” Jack said. “Whatever this is… it's big. I can feel it.”

“Then we'll step in,” Jacob said. “Jack, tell me. How are you really? I remember my first year with the Tok'ra. And I had friends there to help. You've been on your own. You should have come in.”

Jack shrugged. “I'm good.” When Jacob eyed him suspiciously, he said it again. “I'm good. Honest. It's weird, especially the things that have changed about me. But weird's the way of things around here.”

“Sammy asked me some questions at Mark's. Things she's never asked about before. And I'm not blind, Jack. I saw the way Danny was looking at you. Your symbiote mess with your sexuality?”

Jack didn't quite know what to say to that.

“Selmak had almost entirely had female hosts so you can imagine that it screws with your head a little,” Jacob added.

Jack remembered those moments when someone would let you know they'd really been in the shit too, captured, tortured, whatever.

/Is this torture?\ Kavith asked.

/Shut up. You know it's not.\

“Yeah,” he said aloud. “Maybe. What'd you tell Sam about…?”

“That I don't like coffee anymore and that I'm over whatever claustrophobia I had before.”

“Steak,” Jack sighed.

Jacob laughed. “That too. We accidentally joined some sort of vegetarian cult, Jack.”

Jack felt Kavith's interest, his sense of Jacob and Selmak subtly shifting as the two of them bonded.

Every Tok'ra relationship was like this, Jack realized, carrying all the baggage of a complex web of four individuals. 

Kavith took back control to finish work on Machello's papers. Soon they had settled into working next to each other. It was less than an hour later that Jacob looked up from what he was reading of the translations and decoded notes and said, “Well, if this is right, it's scary.”

Kavith looked at what he had. _“It is a control device. I don't know why I didn't realize it before. It explains why the Jaffa I saw seemed so confused.”_ Kavith shook his head.

“Could anyone really use this?” Jacob mused. “Anyone could use it to take control of the Jaffa en masse. God, imagine if they made them work.”

Kavith and Jack were poring over the papers and beginning to have the same conclusions.

Machello's boxes, the Padreescatala, were a method of mind control that only worked on the Jaffa. According to Machello's notes, they worked like a virus, with tiny nanites, not unlike the ones that had infected Daniel and made him think he was insane, only much smaller. These would replicate and spread from one Jaffa to another. They only attacked prim'ta, but once the infant goa'uld was infected, it became even more of a parasite to the Jaffa, able to control its host's actions and mind.

_“I assume Machello planned to use the Jaffa as a weapon against the goa'uld. But he ran out of time.”_

“He needed to wait until the nanite virus had spread widely enough,” Jacob said. “It's been years. If the nanites are resistant to being knocked out by traditional means, they're likely everywhere by now.”

Jack took control. “Shit. The missing rebel Jaffa. They're not kidnapped, they're mind controlled.”

“By who? I know you've been thinking Kali, Jack, but I'm telling you, she's been busy. We have an operative on her and nothing like this has been coming out of there.”

“I thought it was Kali because it was on Talshion and so many of the Jaffa had her emblem. If they're mind controlled, who knows who's pulling the strings. Eshu maybe? All that chatter… But this...” Jack trailed off again. “Shit.”

/You can say that again, friend. It could be anyone.\

“We should let George know about this as soon as possible,” Jacob said, standing up.

Before either of them could leave the room, Sam came in. “We just got a very unusual message via SG-5,” she said. “Dad, I think we could use your input.”

“Sweetie, we have something for you guys as well,” Jacob said.

She looked from him to Jack. Jack wondered again if things would ever be right between them, but she nodded to say they should go ahead before going to hear from SG-5.

“We figured out what Machello's box does,” Jacob explained.

“It's a damned mind control device for Jaffa,” Jack added.

Sam's jaw nearly dropped. “So that's...” she began, then stopped. “The missing rebel Jaffa.”

“Exactly where my head went too, Carter,” Jack said.

“It's worse than just that, though,” Sam said. “SG-5 got a personal message from Eshu. He thinks we kidnapped all his Jaffa. He's willing to call off the System Lords if we return them. Apparently he's pretty attached to his First Prime.”

“But the Tau'ri aren't the ones who stole his Jaffa,” Jack said. He knit his brow as he realized what he'd said. Sam looked at him funny as well, but when he met Jacob's eyes, his old friend had a knowing look.

“Hard to have duel loyalties, huh, Jack? But point taken. Now the big question.”

“If it wasn't the Tok'ra and it wasn't the System Lords and it wasn't us,” Sam said. “Then who did it?”


	17. Chulak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel goes to Chulak in search of the rebel Jaffa and makes an unexpected discovery there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the long delay in posting to anyone still reading. Really, I have this mostly finished and just need to connect the dots. Busy month!

Daniel wanted to like Jennifer Hailey. If nothing else, it would mean he wasn't outnumbered on his team by people he couldn't stand. And he was no stranger to smugness. He knew it was one of his own worst traits so he really tried not to judge it in others. After all, she was really smart. He knew what that was like, to be the smartest person in the room all the time.

The problem was that she combined smug with a rigid adherence to the rulebook, a book Daniel was always trying to get Jack to throw out. And while he and Jack had, once upon a time, managed to work out some sort of compromise about how to proceed, he hadn't come to any such understanding with Colonel Winstead. So any time he tried to talk to her, Lieutenant Hailey was dismissive of him, especially if it was within Colonel Winstead's hearing. After all, he was the one writing her reports.

It took all of ten minutes through the gate on Chulak before he was at odds with the two of them.

“Something isn't right,” Daniel said once they were half a mile out from the gate. He knew Chulak. He and Teal'c both. And this wasn't right. They did often leave the stargate unguarded. Overconfidence was a perpetual flaw in both the goa'uld and the Jaffa cultures. However, they didn't leave the planet abandoned. It was nearly an hourlong walk from the gate to the city, but on a well traveled road that also ran to the temple and out to the fields where, before they defeated him, Apophis had enslaved humans working. Now, Jaffa worked those fields most of the year, but they were empty.

“We're here to investigate just that, Dr. Jackson,” Colonel Winstead said, his tone suggesting that Daniel was a child.

“It's more than that!” Daniel said. “There's something else...” He trailed off. He couldn't say what it was in part because part of what was wrong was Teal'c.

He knew that Jennifer Hailey and Colonel Winstead didn't know Teal'c well enough to distinguish his usual quiet and stoic from a subtle shift into robotic and emotionless, but Daniel did. Something had happened to Teal'c a couple of minutes out of the gate. Something that made Daniel uncomfortable. He had asked Teal'c if he was okay, but there was something about Teal'c's response that made him unsure.

Daniel tried to figure out how to warn Winstead without tipping his hand to Teal'c if there was something wrong with him. This wouldn't have been a problem if Jack had been there. It probably wouldn't have been a problem if Sam was there either.

“I think would should consider radioing for help,” Daniel said.

“We got a message from Bra'tac about the missing Jaffa,” Winstead said. “It's our mission to follow up on that.”

“We should proceed to the city center,” Teal'c said.

There, Daniel wanted to scream. That was terrible advice. Chulak was not always a friendly ally. They shouldn't walk straight into town without having scoped out who was around. They knew better than to do this. However, Colonel Winstead seemed intent on doing whatever Teal'c suggested.

Daniel tried to raise his eyebrows at the Colonel. Then he tried doing it at Lt. Hailey.

“I have the med kit if you have something in your eye, Dr. Jackson,” she said.

“Thanks,” Daniel replied. At that point, he wasn't sure what to do other than keep one hand on his zat and the other on his sidearm.

The edge of town was similarly empty. It wasn't until they got to the center of town, nearly an hour's silent march from the gate, that they began to see signs of life.

What Daniel saw made him extremely nervous. On one of the side streets, he realized there were hundreds of Jaffa lined up in silence looking in the opposite direction from them. He tried to elbow Colonel Winstead, who basically ignored him.

He had to formulate a plan.

“I've never noticed the writing on the columns here,” Daniel said. “Maybe if Lt. Hailey could come with me...”

“No,” Colonel Winstead said.

“It'll just take a minute. I'm just going to take some photos.” Daniel ducked down an alley, hoping that Winstead sent Jennifer Hailey after him instead of bringing all of them after him.

He ducked behind a building and waited. When she passed him, he grabbed her arm, perhaps rougher than he intended, and pulled her into the alcove between the two buildings as well.

“Get your hands off me!” she said, and then it was all he could do not to end up on the ground. As it was, she got in a good jab to his nose and he was pretty sure it wasn't broken but that it would be a swollen mess for days to come.

“Shit,” he said. “Just stop! Listen to me for a minute! We are in danger!”

“You're the one who's in danger if you don't come back to the team right now!” she retorted.

“Listen to me, would you! I have been to this planet dozens of times on dozens of missions and I am telling you that this city is not the way it's supposed to be.”

“Then why wouldn't Teal'c say something?”

“Because Teal'c is not the way he's supposed to be either,” Daniel said. “There is something wrong here and it's wrong in the way that makes SG teams end up dead. We need to get Winstead, and if possible knock Teal'c out and get us all back through the gate.”

“What? No. You can't make that call. We need to ask the colonel what to do.”

“We need to get the hell off Chulak is what we need. No one is behaving normally here. Did you see all those Jaffa lined up in the streets?”

“Jaffa are always really disciplined.”

“Not like that, you inexperienced idiot!” Daniel exploded.

Jennifer Hailey looked like she was about to explode and possibly break his nose properly when they heard the sounds of staff weapons fire from the other end of the alley.

“Shit,” Daniel swore.

He grabbed Jennifer's arm, consequences and broken noses be damned, and ran down the alley to the other side. When they came out, he turned them to the right, running toward the marketplace. If they could get there, he thought they could either get lost in the crowd a little bit or get up on the roofs that overlooked it and climb over to see what was happening.

As it turned out, they didn't make it that far before they saw columns of Jaffa marching in lock step through the gaps in the buildings. And marching with them was Teal'c, who was manhandling Colonel Winstead, who was disarmed and struggling.

“Shit,” Daniel swore again.

He inched his way forward then ducked into one of the empty marketplace stalls, carefully watching the open area in the center of the Jaffa city. It was ringed by temples and pleasure palaces that Apophis had once used. Now it was filled with Jaffa, all standing and looking at an older woman sitting on the edge of the large, central well. She wasn't Jaffa, or, at least, was unmarked. She had the look of someone who was a great beauty in her youth but it had faded to a handsome dignity once she was passing middle age. There were neat streaks of gray in her dark hair.

Daniel couldn't hear what she was saying, but he could see the figure of Colonel Winstead struggling in Teal'c's grasp. And then he saw as the woman dragged a knife across his throat and Colonel Winstead fell to the ground.

Behind him, Daniel heard Jennifer Hailey's ragged breath begin to panic. He turned and grabbed her and made a run for it.

* * *

The only consolation prize to seeing Winstead murdered back in the city was that Jennifer finally treated him like an authority.

Daniel got them away quick but they didn't make for the gate right away. He thought it might have been a mistake, later. If they had gone straight there, maybe it wouldn't have been protected and they could have fled home. But he suspected it wouldn't be an option so he took them the other direction, toward the hills, intending to circle around. By the time they had circled around, nearly half a day later, there were several dozen Jaffa standing by the gate staring into space.

“What's wrong with them?” Jennifer hissed.

“No clue,” Daniel said. He couldn't imagine what was making the Jaffa seem so robotic. At least she finally seemed to see it. “But I think we can presume that this is what is happening to the missing Jaffa. They're under some kind of spell.”

“Pshuh,” Jennifer made a dismissive noise. “There's no such thing as spells. Or hypnosis, before you ask. Not like this. This has to be some kind of tech.”

Daniel began to back up from their observation point, retreating back down the other side of the hill and toward the safer cover of the trees. Watching the enemy stand unnaturally still wasn't helping.

“Okay, so it's tech. But what? Have you heard of anything that would do this?”

Jennifer made another one of her impatient little noises. “No. But who the hell knows what's out here. And, as you're so fond of reminding me, you've seen much more of it.”

They went farther out into the woods. Their supplies weren't meant to last very long. They'd expected to be able to find any provisions they needed on Chulak. Jennifer's camping skills weren't that much more developed than Daniel's. He missed Jack as they tried to formulate a plan. He even missed Tony Winstead.

They spent a long night and then a long day trying to figure out what to do. They might be better off just waiting for backup. When they failed to check in by the following day, the SGC would send someone through. On the other hand, they might be dooming another SG team into walking to a trap on a planet they thought was somewhat friendly. They wanted to come up with a better plan.

On the second morning, Daniel's radio cackled to life as they were debating what to do. Teal'c's voice came through the transmission.

“Daniel Jackson, please respond. Daniel Jackson, please respond.”

Daniel and Jennifer traded looks before Daniel grabbed the radio. “This is Daniel Jackson,” he said hesitantly.

When the voice responded, it wasn't Teal'c. A woman's voice came through the com and Daniel remembered the tall woman in the city with the dark hair with the silver streak. It had to be her.

“Hello, Daniel Jackson.”

“To whom am I speaking?” Daniel asked, keeping his voice light. He had learned to use humor as a shield from Jack, he reflected. At that moment, it felt like the only shield he had. He gestured to Jennifer, who had started packing everything up. They needed to be ready to move out in case they'd been made.

“I am called Kishar,” she said.

Daniel's head briefly spun. She didn't speak in the echoing voice of a symbiote, but that was easy to mask. Was this really Kishar? Kishar had been Tok'ra. If this was Kishar, where had she been for the last millennium and what was her agenda? Daniel's head swam.

“I've heard the name,” Daniel said.

“Have you?” Her voice cackled through the radio.

“But you must not be the one I know. The Kishar I know of was Tok'ra.”

“There are many ways of resistance.”

Daniel's mind worked fast. So she was Kishar, or at least claiming to be. But she had gone rogue somehow. “There are. We also try to resist the System Lords.”

“Yes. I see that now. I regret what was done to your comrade. Sometimes my orders are followed a little too closely.”

Jennifer looked infuriated, like she'd like to jump through the radio and murder Kishar with her bare hands. Daniel didn't really doubt that she would try if she could. She had a bloodthirsty look in her eyes occasionally that made him think she was probably capable of serious violence.

“That was a mistake, was it?”

“One I'd like to make right,” she replied.

“And how could you possibly do that?”

“We will clear the Chapa'pai for the next hour and let you pass if you will carry a message back to the Tau'ri for us.”

Jennifer shook her head and made to grab the radio but Daniel pulled away. “What's the message?”

“Meet me at the Chapa'ai and I'll tell you.”

“No way!” Jennifer hissed at him.

“What choice do we have?” Daniel asked.

“What choice? Are you kidding? We can refuse to walk into a trap.”

They went back and forth like that for several minutes, but Daniel was pretty sure that if he started toward the gate that Jennifer would follow him. She was stubborn and thought of herself as a maverick, but she also didn't want to be alone in the woods on another planet and her “protect the civilian” ethic was too strong to overcome, even if the civilian was trying to get himself killed.

“We shouldn't be doing this,” she said a dozen times as they walked toward the gate.

Daniel ignored her and walked on determinedly.

Kishar was seated on a sort of tall chair that may as well have been a throne, casually fanning herself in the heat of the day. She wore a long dress out of some sort of iridescent material that shimmered in the bright sunlight. She had a look that Daniel recognized from many of the goa'uld. It was a look of disdain for the rest of the world.

“I'm glad you came,” she said. “Your Teal'c has shared so much about you. I'm quite impressed.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

“That I'm impressive? I assure you that I am. That you learned much about me? I suspect your information is woefully out of date.”

Daniel nodded. He could hear Jennifer behind him shifting her feet on the rocky ground.

“I do wonder what the Tok'ra say of me now. They were not kind to me during our brief alliance.”

That didn't sound promising. “Just tell me the message,” Daniel insisted.

“It's only this. I have no quarrel with the humans of the galaxy. However, you are like ants. So plentiful that if I crush some of you, it does not matter much in the end. And if ants cross a road you need to take, I know you also would step on them without a care for them.”

“Not sentient ants. Not thinking ants,” Daniel clenched his jaw.

She smiled. “Yes. For the… as you say… sentient ants… one puts up a sign they can read or passes on a message.”

“I see.”

“Good. I'm glad you see. Please convey my message to the other ants.”

“And what about my other friend? Will he be joining us?”

“The Jaffa? No, I'm afraid not. The Jaffa are an infection. None of them must be allowed to survive.”

“I see.” Daniel narrowed his brow. “But you're using them.”

She waved her hand in a circular motion. “They're the tool at my disposal at the moment.”

“Do they know this?”

“Know? Of course not. They do not know anything. They are empty vessels now, like they were always meant to be.”

Daniel tried to formulate a response, but before he could say anything, she stood up. “But enough of that. I grow weary of discussion with the ants. Be on your way, talkative ant and quietly furious ant.”

Jennifer began sputtering and Daniel worried briefly that she would try to shoot Kishar. He turned back to her, hoping a glance would be enough to stop anything she might do. She glared back at him.

“Wait,” Daniel said as Kishar began to walk away. “What about the Tok'ra?”

“What of them?”

“Do you have a message for them? Are they ants?”

“Of course not, foolish bug. They are the enemy.”

“But…” Daniel didn't know what to make of this. “You said resistance came in different forms. You don't resist the System Lords any more?”

“They are both the enemy,” Kishar said, almost casually, gesturing at Jennifer. “Girl, dial your planet now or I'll have you killed.”

Daniel nodded to her and Jennifer began to dial the address for Earth. By the time the wormhole engaged, Kishar was almost around the bend in the road toward the city, her long, dark hair with its silver streak blowing slightly in a hot wind and her dress trailing on the ground behind her.


End file.
